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Republic of the Congo
Quick Overview:
Congo is an independent republic with a democratic government which lies between Gabon and Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) and forms part of the West Central African Region. The capital city is Brazzaville. Other major towns are Loubomo and the port of Pointe-Noire. The official language is French. The local currency is the CFA- franc. (US$ / CFA Franc - current exchange rate). The oil industry in Congo, the fourth largest oil producer in sub- Saharan Africa, is key to the economy of the country. In particular the upstream oil industry is its major source of foreign exchange. Falling oil prices have affected the country's GDP significantly and damaged economic progress. The country has an oil refinery at Pointe-Noire. Electricity is provided by the parastatal utility Societe Nationale d'Electricite. Expansions in the oil industry and other areas of the Congolese economy have led to the revival of the Sounda Gorge hydro-electric power project first mooted in 1952. Other significant industries include mining. The agricultural sector has been neglected and consists mostly of subsistence farming. Cassava is the main food crop, coffee and cocoa are the main cash crops and sugar and tobacco are also grown. With a large portion of the country covered in tropical rainforest, the timber industry in Congo supplies a major portion of the country's export revenue. Strict environmental controls are in place to ensure that the forestry sector is able to sustain itself. A small manufacturing sector deals mostly with agricultural and forestry products. The devaluation of the Franc Zone in 1994 led to an increase in inflation which has subsequently decreased. Economic reform is taking place with the aid of international organisations. However, civil war in 1997 and further unrest continued to halt reforms. The Congo-Ocean Railway forms an important link in the equatorial Africa transport system. The road network, on the other hand, is under developed. The international time zone for Congo is GMT +1 and the international dialling code is +242. The principal airlines that fly to Brazzaville are Air Afrique, Air France, Sabena and Air Portugal. International airports are located at Brazzaville and Pointe Noire and several smaller airports are served by the national airline, Lina Congo. All nationals require visas in order to visit Congo. A superior insurance service is provided by the local representative of AfriNet, risk managers and insurance brokers of Africa. The state of health, the current immunisation status, location and the local disease situation lead to risk of contraction of cholera, hepatitis A, malaria, schistosomiasis, typhoid fever, and yellow fever in Congo. A risk assessment is recommended prior to arrival in the country.
Geography:
Human habitation of the Congo basin came relatively late in the Sangoan era (100,000 to 40,000 ), perhaps because of the dense forest. The people who used the large-core, bifacial Sangoan tools probably subsisted by food gathering and digging up roots; they were not hunters. Refined versions of this tradition continued through the Lupemban (40,000 to 25,000 ) and Tshitolian eras. Only late in the first millennium did agriculture emerge in the savanna adjacent to the lower Congo River. The early inhabitants were farmer-trappers, fishing peoples, and Pygmy hunters. People lived in households including kin and unrelated individuals; at the centre of the household was a "big man," who represented the group. Mobility--of individuals, groups, goods, and ideas--figured prominently and created a common social environment. Such intercommunication is evident from the closely related Bantu languages of the region. Speakers of the Eastern (Ubangian) languages lived in the north but maintained ties with their forest neighbours. Larger-scale societies emerged between AD 1000 and 1500; they were based on clans whose members lived in different villages, village clusters with chiefs, and small forest principalities. Chiefdoms on the southern fringes became more complex; three kingdoms eventually developed: Loango, at the mouth of the Kouilou River on the Atlantic coast; Kongo, which had its beginnings in the first millennium, in the far southwest; and Tio, which grew out of small chiefdoms on the plains north of Malebo (Stanley) Pool. Rulers derived power from control over spirit cults, but trade eventually became a second pillar of power. In 1483 the Portuguese landed in Kongo. Initially, relations between the Kongolese and Portuguese rulers were good. Characterized by the exchange of representatives and the sojourn of Kongolese students in Portugal, this period was a harbinger of late 20th-century technical assistance. Unfortunately, the need of Portuguese planters on São Tomé for slaves undermined this amicable arrangement by the 1530s. Between 1600 and 1800, the slave trade expanded. Local leaders challenged state control. Among the Tio the western chiefs became more autonomous. Contact with Europeans also introduced new American food crops. Corn (maize) and cassava allowed greater population densities. This, along with the emergence of a "market" for foodstuffs, led to greater use of slaves, intensified women's work, and changed the sexual division of labour. By the early 19th century the Congo River had become a major avenue of commerce between the coast and the interior. Henry Morton Stanley, a British journalist, explored the river in 1877, but France acquired jurisdiction in 1880 when Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza signed a treaty with the Tio ruler. The formal proclamation of the colony of French Congo came in 1891. Early French efforts to exploit their possession led to ruthless treatment of the local people, and Brazza returned in 1905 to lead an inquiry. In 1910 the French joined Congo with neighbouring colonies as the federation of French Equatorial Africa, with its capital at Brazzaville. (See Brazza, Pierre-Paul-François-Camille Savorgnan de.) The French were preoccupied with acquiring labour. Forced labour, head taxes, compulsory production of cash crops, and draconian labour contracts forced Africans to build infrastructure and to participate in the colonial economy. No project was more costly in African lives than the Congo-Ocean Railway, built between 1921 and 1934 from Pointe-Noire to Brazzaville; between 15,000 and 20,000 Africans died. In 1940 Congo rallied to the Free French forces. Charles de Gaulle, Governor-General Félix Eboué, and African leaders held a conference in Brazzaville in 1944 to announce more liberal policies. In 1946 Congo became an overseas territory of France with representatives in the French Parliament and an elected Territorial Assembly. Ten years later, the loi cadre (enabling act) endowed the colony with an elected government. Congo became a republic within the French Community in 1958 and acquired complete political independence in August 1960. Two major parties existed at independence: the African Socialist Movement (Mouvement Socialiste Africain; MSA) and the Democratic Union for the Defense of African Interests (Union Démocratique pour la Défense des Intérêts Africains; UDDIA). The two parties pitted the north against the south, an opposition that stemmed from the privileged place occupied by the southern Kongo and Vili in the colonial era. The two parties also had different political philosophies. The MSA favoured a powerful state and a partially publicly owned economy; the UDDIA advocated private ownership and close ties with France. UDDIA leader Fulbert Youlou formed the first parliamentary government in 1958; in 1959 he became premier and president. Corruption, incompetence, mass disapproval, general strikes, and lack of French support led to Youlou's ouster in 1963. His successor, Alphonse Massamba-Débat, shifted policies to the left, notably by founding the National Revolutionary Movement (Mouvement National de la Révolution; MNR) as the sole party. The country sought assistance from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China and voted with the more radical African states in world forums. Regionally, Congo extended concrete support and offered a geographic base for the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the Marxist movement that won independence for that country. Congo also offered asylum to the Patrice Lumumba followers who fled the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (from 1971 to 1997 called Zaire) and plotted for a return to power there. Regionalism and policy failures led the military to replace Massamba-Débat with Major Marien Ngouabi in 1968. Ngouabi maintained a socialist line, renaming the country the People's Republic of the Congo on Dec. 31, 1969; the Congolese Labour Party (PCT) replaced the MNR at the same time. Ngouabi was a northerner, and his regime shifted control of the country away from the south. Such moves created opposition among workers and students in the highly politicized environment of Brazzaville and other southern urban centres. Ngouabi was assassinated in March 1977. His successor, the more conservative Colonel Joachim Yhombi-Opango, soon clashed with the PCT, and Colonel Denis Sassou-Nguesso replaced Yhombi-Opango in 1979. Although Sassou-Nguesso represented the more militant wing of the PCT--and immediately introduced a new constitution intended as a first step toward building a Marxist-Leninist society--he improved relations with the Western nations and with France. The regime's political language became more moderate, but the inefficient state enterprises created by earlier socialist policies remained in place in the early 1980s. They had been subsidized by petroleum production, but the drop in oil and other raw material prices led to economic crisis. The external debt surpassed $1.5 billion in 1985, and debt service consumed 45 percent of state revenue. Negotiations with the International Monetary Fund the following year led to an agreement to help the national economy in exchange for cuts in public spending and the state bureaucracy. At the end of the 1980s, however, the debt had tripled in size and the economic crisis continued. (D.D.C.) In 1991 a new constitution was drafted, which included dropping the word "People's" from the country's official name and was adopted by referendum in March 1992. Pascal Lissouba succeded Sassou-Nguesso following elections that August. A period of shaky parliamentary government ensued, which ended when Sassou-Nguesso led a successful insurrection against the government in 1997; he was reinstated as president late in the year. (Ed.)
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