Central Africa

Bantu-speaking farmers spread from the Cameroon–Nigeria borderlands into the equatorial forest and beyond over the last three thousand years, bringing iron-working and crops, while Ba'Aka, Baka, Mbuti and other forest peoples kept older hunting and gathering ways. Along the lower Congo, the Kingdom of Kongo was a centralised state by the 14th century; its king converted to Christianity after the Portuguese arrived in 1483. Further north and east, kingdoms such as Loango, Tio (Teke), Kuba and Luba rose on trade in copper, raffia cloth, ivory and, from the 16th century, people sold into the Atlantic slave trade.

The Atlantic trade drained the coast of millions of people over three centuries. In the 19th century explorers — Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza for France, Henry Morton Stanley for King Leopold II of Belgium — raced up the Congo River, signing treaties with local rulers. The Berlin Conference of 1884–85 recognised Leopold's personal Congo Free State; France took the north bank (French Congo, later French Equatorial Africa, including Gabon, Chad and Ubangi-Shari, now the CAR); Germany took Kamerun; Spain kept Fernando Po (Bioko) and Río Muni.

Leopold's Congo and the concession companies of French Equatorial Africa ran on forced labour for rubber and ivory, enforced by hostage-taking, mutilation and killing; the population fell sharply. International protest led Belgium to annex the Congo in 1908. After the First World War, German Kamerun was split between France and Britain as League of Nations mandates.

Independence came in 1960 for Cameroon, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Chad, the CAR and the Belgian Congo, and in 1968 for Equatorial Guinea. The Congo crisis followed immediately: secession in Katanga, the murder of Patrice Lumumba in 1961, and in 1965 the seizure of power by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, who renamed the country Zaire. France kept close military and monetary ties with its former colonies, and several leaders stayed in power for decades.

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 spilled into eastern Zaire and set off the two Congo wars (1996–97 and 1998–2003), which drew in armies from across the region and killed millions, mostly through hunger and disease. Eastern DRC has not been at peace since; the M23 rebel group, backed by Rwanda according to UN experts, took Goma in January 2025 and Bukavu in February 2025. US- and Qatar-brokered agreements in 2025 did not return those cities to Kinshasa's control (check the current state).

The Congo Basin holds the second-largest tropical rainforest on earth after the Amazon, spread across the DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Cameroon, the CAR and Equatorial Guinea. It absorbs a large share of the world's forest carbon and is home to forest elephants, western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos (found only south of the Congo River in the DRC), okapi, bongo and hundreds of bird species. The Congo River is the deepest river in the world and second only to the Amazon by volume; it crosses the equator twice.

Gabon keeps nearly 90 per cent of its territory under forest and in 2002 created thirteen national parks at once, covering about a tenth of the country. Loango is the image most people know: forest elephants and hippos on the beach, whales offshore from July to September. Lopé mixes savanna and forest and is a UNESCO site. In northern Congo-Brazzaville, Odzala-Kokoua and Nouabalé-Ndoki are among the best places to see western lowland gorillas that have been habituated to people. The Sangha Trinational, shared by Cameroon, the CAR and Congo, is another UNESCO site.

Wildlife viewing here is not savanna safari. Animals are seen from forest trails, from boats on rivers and at bais — natural clearings where elephants, gorillas and buffalo come to feed on minerals. Sightings take patience, walks are hot and muddy, and park visits are almost always arranged through a lodge or operator. Habituated gorilla groups are visited in small groups with masks and distance rules to protect them from human diseases.

The threats are logging roads, bushmeat hunting, ivory poaching and mining. Eastern DRC's Virunga, Africa's oldest national park (1925) and home to mountain gorillas, has lost many rangers to armed groups and has been closed to tourists; Rwanda and Uganda are where visitors see mountain gorillas today.

Central Africa is linguistically dense: Cameroon alone has about 250 languages. Most belong to the Bantu family — Lingala along the middle Congo and in Kinshasa and Brazzaville, Kikongo and its trade form Kituba in the south-west, Fang in Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and southern Cameroon, Duala on the Cameroon coast. Swahili is the lingua franca of eastern DRC; Sango unifies the CAR; Chadian Arabic is spoken across Chad. Forest peoples such as the Baka and Ba'Aka have their own languages and face discrimination over land and forest rights.

French is the language of government and business in six countries, making Kinshasa the largest French-speaking city in the world. Cameroon is officially bilingual in French and English, the legacy of its split mandate; tensions over the treatment of the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions turned into an armed conflict in 2017. Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa.

Christianity dominates the south of the region, with a large Catholic church, fast-growing Pentecostal and revival churches, and local movements such as Kimbanguism in the DRC and Bwiti, an initiation tradition in Gabon that uses the iboga root. Islam dominates northern Cameroon and Chad. Beliefs in ancestors, spirits and healers run alongside both, and chiefdoms — the Bamiléké and Bamoun kingdoms of western Cameroon above all — keep real authority over land and custom.

Six of the seven countries share the Central African CFA franc, issued by the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) in Yaoundé and pegged to the euro with a French Treasury guarantee. The peg keeps inflation low and prices stable for visitors, but critics see it as a colonial hangover; West Africa's CFA zone has begun reforms, while the Central African zone has moved more slowly. The six form CEMAC, an economic and monetary community that allows visa-free movement for their own citizens.

Oil pays for much of the state in Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Cameroon, and the DRC holds some of the world's largest reserves of cobalt and copper, central to batteries for electric cars. That wealth has not reached most people: Equatorial Guinea has one of Africa's highest incomes per head on paper and widespread poverty in practice. Prices for visitors are high in the oil capitals because hotels and flights are priced for the industry.

Long rule is the political norm. Paul Biya has governed Cameroon since 1982 and was declared winner of an eighth term in October 2025 amid deadly protests. Teodoro Obiang has ruled Equatorial Guinea since 1979 and moved the capital to Ciudad de la Paz on the mainland in January 2026. Denis Sassou Nguesso was re-elected in Congo-Brazzaville in March 2026 after a boycotted vote. Gabon's Bongo family rule ended in a 2023 coup; its leader, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, was elected president in 2025. Chad is led by Mahamat Déby, the CAR by Faustin-Archange Touadéra (third term from 2026), the DRC by Félix Tshisekedi.

Congolese rumba — born in the bars of Léopoldville and Brazzaville in the 1940s and 1950s, mixing Cuban son records with local guitar styles — became the sound of the continent through Franco and TPOK Jazz, Tabu Ley Rochereau and later Papa Wemba and Koffi Olomidé. UNESCO added it to its intangible heritage list in 2021, as a joint listing by both Congos. Ndombolo and today's Afro-pop grew out of it. Cameroon gave Africa makossa (Manu Dibango's 'Soul Makossa') and bikutsi, and the Sapeurs of Brazzaville and Kinshasa turn designer clothes into a public performance.

Visual art runs from the reliquary guardians of the Fang and Kota in Gabon — collected by Picasso's generation in Paris — to the Poto-Poto painting school in Brazzaville (founded 1951), Kinshasa's popular painters such as Chéri Samba, and the bronze-casters and beadwork of the Bamoun and Bamiléké courts in Cameroon.

Food is built on cassava, plantain, groundnuts and palm oil. Cassava leaves become saka-saka (pondu in Kinshasa), cassava roots become chikwangue or bâton de manioc, fermented and steamed in leaves. Fish is smoked or grilled whole; chicken is braised with plantain in Cameroon's poulet DG; bitterleaf and groundnuts make Cameroon's ndolé; moambe, a sauce of palm-nut pulp, is claimed by Gabon and both Congos. Bushmeat is sold openly in markets and on menus; eating it supports poaching and carries disease risk, including Ebola and mpox.