Settlement patterns
News •
People have long lived in most regions of Congo. Over time, they became specialized in the exploitation of their natural environments. Forest peoples, such as the Bambuti (Pygmies) of the Ituri Forest, for example, have historically specialized in hunting and fishing, while agriculture has remained secondary or is nonexistent. In the savanna woodlands, inhabitants combine agriculture with hunting and fishing. In some areas in the southern half of the country, people raise small livestock and poultry and also mine copper, iron ore, and other minerals. In the grasslands, inhabitants confine themselves almost solely to agriculture. In the eastern grasslands, agriculture is combined with the raising of large livestock.
About one-half of the Congolese population is rural, with most people living in scattered villages. The style of housing varies regionally, as does the general size of the villages. A village with 10 to 25 houses is generally considered small, while one with 150 to 200 is large. The most populous areas are the savanna woodlands of the south-central regions and, to some extent, the coastal regions, where the largest villages shelter some 300 to 500 people. The eastern grasslands areas have isolated farms and hamlets.
Some trading and administrative centers, such as Banana, Vivi, and Boma, date from the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century. Most towns, however, are of more recent origin. Kinshasa, until 1966 called Léopoldville, is the official seat of national political, administrative, and judiciary institutions and is also an important commercial and industrial center. It is a center of music, fashion, and popular culture as well. The rapid growth of Kinshasa typifies that of many of the country’s cities. In 1889 it had a population of 5,000; by 1925, when it was recognized as a ville (urban center), it had grown to 28,000. The city jumped to a population of 250,000 in 1950, 1,500,000 in 1971, and about 4,700,000 in the mid-1990s—an increase of nearly a thousandfold in a little more than a century.
There are a number of other major cities; all are administrative or commercial centers, with the exception of Likasi, which is mainly an industrial and mining town. Kananga is the capital of Kasaï-Occidental (Western Kasai) province. Lubumbashi (formerly Élisabethville), the administrative headquarters of Katanga, is the heavily industrialized capital of the country’s copper-mining zone. Mbuji-Mayi is the capital of Kasaï-Oriental (Eastern Kasai) province and Congo’s diamond center. Kisangani (formerly Stanleyville), the terminal point of navigation on the Congo River from Kinshasa, is the capital of Orientale province. Bukavu, the headquarters of Sud-Kivu province, is a major tourist center; Kikwit, the former capital of Bandundu province, is the terminal port on the Kwilu River; and Matadi, the capital of Bas-Congo, is the country’s main port. Mbandaka is a river port and the capital of Équateur province.
All these towns developed during the colonial period, when there were separate sectors for Europeans and Africans. European neighborhoods were characterized by big houses with large yards, wide paved streets, and adequate electricity. African areas were crowded, with smaller houses and yards and poor, if any, electric supply. These contrasts are still characteristic of the cities, although the formerly European neighborhoods are now inhabited chiefly by elite Congolese.
Demographic trends
Congo’s rate of natural increase is among the highest in the world. More than two-fifths of the population is younger than age 15, with some three-fourths under age 30; on the other hand, only a small fraction of the population is 60 or older. The negligible provision of medical care by the state—along with poverty, violence, and endemic disease—has limited life expectancy, which for both men and women is far below the global average.
Economy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
At independence in 1960, the formal economy of Congo was based almost entirely on the extraction of minerals, primarily copper and diamonds. Most of this economic activity was controlled by foreign companies, such as the Belgian Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), whose assets in 1965 were valued at nearly $430 million. By that time, UMHK was one of the largest single sources of Congolese governmental revenue and accounted for a large proportion of the country’s foreign exchange earnings.
Following the coup carried out by Mobutu in 1965, however, the new government made plans to nationalize UMHK. The ensuing struggle between the government and UMHK ended in a compromise in 1967 whereby UMHK operations were taken over by a newly created state company, Générale des Carrières et des Mines (Gécamines), but daily operations were contracted out to a private management company created by the former UMHK.
This arrangement provided the blueprint for the Mobutu government’s steady acquisition of private economic concerns—heralded as the “Zairianization” of the economy. Mobutu appropriated the income from new state enterprises, using it to amass a huge personal fortune and to create a vast patronage network. In the 1970s and ’80s, he also portioned out control over state enterprises to shifting networks of associates whose loyalty he needed. He offered concessions to foreign private enterprises as well. Increasingly, the economy became an adjunct of Mobutu’s political machine.
At first, international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, as well as Mobutu’s allies in the West, turned a blind eye to his personal appropriation of the economy and the associated declines in productivity and exports. The fall in copper prices in the mid-1970s, however, led to audits of state enterprises that revealed high levels of embezzlement. Nonetheless, Mobutu remained an important Cold War ally for Western countries, and for the next 20 years international financial institutions and his Western allies continued to find ways to keep the sinking economy afloat.
Yet as the economy became less and less productive, funds directed toward the maintenance of Mobutu’s national, regional, and local patronage networks were becoming insufficient. Both state managers and private owners of enterprises increasingly resorted to extortion and force to maintain their wealth. Units of the army, as well as private militias, supplanted formal state authority in much of the country. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and heightened demands for democratic reform worldwide, Mobutu’s Western allies finally pressed for reforms in Congo.
By this time, however, the country was in crisis. Between 1990 and 1995, the economy demonstrated a negative annual growth rate of –8.42 percent. In the early 1990s the value of the national currency sank to remarkable lows. Average per capita income, which continued to fall drastically, was more than halved between 1990 and 2000 to become one of the lowest in the world. The state, nearly bankrupt, provided scarcely any services to the population, which, in any case, increasingly did its business in an unofficial parallel economy, or black market. The outbreak of civil conflict in the late 1990s deeply exacerbated the failures of the economy, which subsequently continued to decline.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Congo took steps to stabilize its economic situation; in 2001, for example, it shifted toward a more market-oriented economy. With the participation of the IMF and the World Bank, other structural reforms were undertaken to liberalize the economy, break hyperinflation, and encourage a more stable macroeconomic atmosphere. In 2002 the country experienced positive growth in its gross domestic product (GDP) for the first time in more than a decade, and the economy continued to expand throughout the remainder of the early 2000s, a factor attributed in part to increased stability following the end of the civil war.
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
Domestic agriculture is the main source of food and income for the majority of the population. Agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing, and forestry combined provide employment for more than three-fourths of the labor force and, on average, account for more than two-fifths of GDP.
Although the country is rich in agricultural potential, deterioration of the transportation network and agricultural services since independence have led to a return to subsistence agriculture and a collapse of market production. Foodstuffs such as cereals and fish are imported in increasing amounts. Coffee is the chief agricultural export, although much of it is smuggled out of the country; production of palm oil, rubber, and cotton, once mainstays of the export economy, has become almost negligible.
In the humid equatorial region, cassava (manioc) and rice are the basic food crops. Peanuts (groundnuts), oil palms, and fruit trees are also important, while robusta coffee is the main cash crop. In the eastern highlands, yams, beans, and sweet potatoes are used as food crops, while arabica coffee and tea are export commodities. Corn (maize), an important subsistence crop, is grown widely but chiefly centered on the southeast. Vegetable growing is widespread throughout Congo.
Livestock and poultry are kept in every province. Cattle are raised mainly in the east and the south. Pigs are kept in the west and sheep in the eastern highlands. Other domestic animals include chickens, geese, pigeons, and rabbits. Commercial meat production is limited, however, and the country depends upon imports to fulfill its requirements.
A small part of the yearly production of timber is exported for veneering or plywood; most, however, is used locally for fuel. There is some commercial freshwater and ocean fishing. Local hunting, fishing for private consumption, and poaching of wild game are not ordinarily reported in official statistics and are difficult to measure.
