Republic of the Congo

The Republic of the Congo (pronunciation(help·info)French: République du Congo, Kituba: Repubilika ya Kôngo), also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic^[6][7] or simply either Congo or the Congo, is a country located in the western coast of Central Africa. The country is bordered to the west by Gabon, to its northwest by Cameroon and its northeast by the Central African Republic  , to the southeast by the DR Congo, to its south by the Angolan exclave of Cabinda and to its southwest by the Atlantic Ocean. French is the official language of the Republic of the Congo.

The region was dominated by Bantu-speaking tribes at least 3,000 years ago, who built trade links leading into the Congo River basin. Congo was formerly part of the French colony of Equatorial Africa.^[8] The Republic of the Congo was established on 28 November 1958 and gained independence from France in 1960. It was a Marxist–Leninist state from 1969 to 1992, under the name People's Republic of the Congo. The sovereign state has had multi-party elections since 1992, although a democratically elected government was ousted in the 1997 Republic of the Congo Civil War, and President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who first came to power in 1979, has now ruled for over four decades.

The Republic of the Congo is a member of the African Union, the United Nations, La Francophonie, the Economic Community of Central African States, and the Non-Aligned Movement. It has become the fourth-largest oil producer in the Gulf of Guinea, providing the country with a degree of prosperity despite political and economic instability in some areas and unequal distribution of oil revenue nationwide. Congo's economy is heavily dependent on the oil sector,^[9] and economic growth has slowed considerably since the post-2015 drop in oil prices. With a population of 5.2 million, 88.5% of the country practices Christianity.

The Republic of the Congo is named after the Congo River, whose name is derived from Kongo, a Bantu kingdom which occupied its mouth around the time of its discovery by the Portuguese in 1483^[10] or 1484.^[11] The kingdom's name derived from its people, the Bakongo, an endonym said to mean "hunters" (Kongo: mukongo, nkongo).^[12]

During the period when it was colonized by France, it was known as the French Congo or Middle Congo. To distinguish it from the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is sometimes referred to as Congo (Brazzaville) or Congo-Brazzaville. Brazzaville derives from the colony's founder, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazzà, an Italian nobleman whose title referred to the town of Brazzacco, in the comune of Moruzzo, whose name derived from the Latin Brattius or Braccius, both meaning "arm".^[13]

Bantu-speaking peoples who founded tribes during the Bantu expansions largely displaced and absorbed the earliest inhabitants of the region, the Pygmy people, about 1500 BC. The Bakongo, a Bantu ethnic group that also occupied parts of present-day Angola, Gabon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formed the basis for ethnic affinities and rivalries among those countries. Several Bantu kingdoms—notably those of the Kongo, the Loango, and the Teke—built trade links leading into the Congo River basin.^[14]