Democratic Republic of Congo
Population
The population is estimated to be 47 440 362. Approximately 18 people per square kilometre.
Language
The official language is French and others are Swahili, Kikongo and Tshiluba. Lingala is a mixture of local languages used for trade transactions and by the military.
Capital City
Kinshasa
Located in central Africa, the country is 2 345 410km² in extent and is bordered by Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and Zambia.
Its borders with these countries amount to some 10 271km while a 37km coastline gives access to the Atlantic Ocean, where the Congo River flows into the sea.
There is a vast central plateau rising to volcanoes and mountains in the east, the highest point being Margherita Peak at 5 119m. Tropical rain forest and woodland cover some 77 percent of the central plateau and the highlands.
The country is covered by some 77 810km² of waterways, these river and lake systems dominating life in the area. The Great Lakes region includes Lakes Tanganyika, Edward, Albert and Kivu.
There are over 200 different ethnic groups in this vast country. The four largest tribes that make up 45 percent of the population are the Mangbetu-Azande, Kongo, Mongo and Luba.
Artistic carving, both traditional and modern dance, as well as folk songs play an important part in Congolese culture, which is strongly based on tradition.
Congolese folkways and culture, although influenced by European life in the urban centres, remain largely intact among the different ethnic groups. The country has several museums which preserve both present and past aspects of the many different peoples in the country, the principal ones being located in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi.
Religion
Seventy percent of the population are Christian, 50 percent being Roman Catholic and 20 percent Protestant. Muslims number 10 percent and the remainder practice traditional beliefs.
The majority of the country's population support the attempt to establish a liberal democracy. The dispute with rebel factions has been contained to certain areas and other nations of the region have been supporting the government efforts to establish a lasting peace.
The constitution adopted by referendum in 1992 allows for the election of a president and a bicameral parliament comprising a 125-member National Assembly and a 60-member Senate.
The national Assembly and president are elected for 5-year terms and the Senate serves six years.
Since the country was freed from the previous dictatorship by rebel forces under Laurent Kabila, who then became president, the country has been troubled with ongoing civil war conducted by other rebel groups, supported by other countries who were once allies of Kabila's party.
Kabila's recent assassination resulted in his son taking over without due democratic process and the country continues to be run by a president, with the parliament acting only in an advisory capacity.
The original peoples of this massive country were hunter-gatherer communities who lived in the dense forest regions. They were joined in the 14th century by Bantu and Nilotic tribes from the north and various kingdoms were established, the most important being the kingdom of the Kongo.
During the 15th and 16th centuries the Portuguese were attracted to the region for its gold, ivory and slaves and a brisk trade developed with the interior. It was British journalist Henry Stanley however who, in his search for David Livingstone, travelled up the Congo River in the late 19th century and opened the gates for colonialisation.
In 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium claimed the country as a personal possession, handing it over in 1908 to the Belgian government for administration. From this period, until they were granted independence in June 1960, the inhabitants were subjected to a particularly restrictive colonialism.
On independence, the country was called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but the political parties were ill prepared for independence and political and economic problems abounded.
The powerful army commander, Joseph Mobutu, staged a military coup in 1965 and renamed the country Zaire. He stayed in power for 32 years until 1997 when he was himself ousted from power by a military coup led by General Laurent Kabila. Following Kabila's assassination, his son has taken over as president, supported by the army of which he is still commander.
The country was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo and for a short period euphoria reigned until 1998, when rebel activity surfaced and once again plunged the country into turmoil.
Below is another version of history taken from http://www.amadeus.net/home/dest/en/AFRICA/cog/32.htm
Originally part of the kingdom of the Kongo, the area was discovered by the Portuguese in the 15th century and later became a major region for the slave trade.
In 1882 the territory was occupied by FRANCE, then absorbed into French Equatorial Africa between 1910 and 1958.
The Congo was granted full independence as a republic in August 1960.
Abbé Fulbert Youlou, a Catholic priest, was elected President and guided the Congo into a single-party state, in accordance with the trend throughout Africa. A series of left-wing military governments followed until elections for the presidency were held in 1979 and brought Colonel Denis Sassou-Nguesso to power as both head of the ruling Parti Congolais du Travail (PCT) and, after 1984, as head of the Government. In line with his predecessors, Sassou-Nguesso pursued a broadly socialist path of development. His position became gradually less secure since the mid-1980s with civil unrest following the introduction of austerity measures and an attempted coup in July 1987.
Within the PCT, however, he remained unassailed, having been elected in 1989 for a third consecutive 5-year term.
In November 1989, the Government introduced free-market policies, promoting private enterprise and conducting several privatisations. The political reform process began in 1991 with a national conference to discuss the future of the country.
This agreed to establish a Higher Council of the republic, abolishing the principal organs of state and with a brief to prepare legislative and presidenial elections for the following year. These took place as scheduled, bringing to power the Union Panafricaine pour la Democratie Social (UPADS) as the major party in both the National Assembly and the Senate while its leader, Pascal Lissouba, won the presidential poll.
There have been occasional outbreaks of fighting between the army and militias loyal to the deposed Sassou-Nguesso; otherwise the transition to democracy has occurred peacefully.
The Government's foreign policy has also been realigned away from the former Soviet Union, of which it was a steady ally, towards FRANCE and the francophone countries of West Africa.
Industries include mining of diamonds and minerals, manufacture of textiles and footwear and the processing of food and beverages. Exports include coffee, cobalt, oil, copper and diamonds. The country imports food, consumer goods, mining and transport equipment and fuels and its main trading partners are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Africa, the UK and US.
Nearly half the population live in towns and cities. Subsistence living in forest villages has been increasingly abandoned by each new generation in favour of employment in urban environment.
The economy relies primarily on its reserves of oil and timber. Roughly 60 percent of the country is covered by forests, about half of which are exploitable. Forestry is thus an important economic activity and a major employer. This, together with crop farming of both staples (cassava, plantains) and cash crops (sugar, palm oil, cocoa, coffee), means 60 percent of the labour force work on the land. Even so, the country continues to depend on a large quantity of imported food.
A further 20 percent of workers are employed in various industries, of which the most important is oil. The first oil field came on stream in 1960 and the industry now accounts for nearly 90 percent of export earnings, affording the DRC a healthy trade surplus in recent years. The strength of the agricultural sector has also saved the country from severe economic difficulty.