50 Fun Facts About Central Africa

Which boxer beat George Foreman in 1974's Rumble in the Jungle, staged in what is now the DR Congo?

Muhammad Ali soaked up punches on the ropes, a tactic he later dubbed the rope-a-dope, then knocked out the tiring champion in the eighth round.

Which virus, first identified in 1976, takes its name from a river in the northern DR Congo?

Ebola was first identified in the village of Yambuku, but the scientists named it after a river some distance away to spare the village the stigma.

Eclipse photographs taken on the island of Príncipe in 1919 confirmed which physicist's new theory of gravity?

Einstein had predicted that the Sun's gravity bends starlight, and Arthur Eddington's measurements off the African coast brought him worldwide fame.

Which stripe-legged forest mammal, wild only in the DR Congo, is the giraffe's closest living relative?

Okapi were unknown to science until 1901, when the first description placed the species among the horses and zebras.

Which comic-strip hero visited the Congo in his second adventure, serialised from 1930?

Tintin and his dog Snowy were sent to report on the colony; Hergé redrew the story in 1946, and critics have since called it racist and imperialistic.

Equatorial Guinea is the only sovereign country in Africa where which European language is official?

Spanish came with colonial rule that lasted until 1968, and it remains the common tongue among the country's different ethnic groups.

The Congo, Africa's second-longest river after the Nile, holds which world record among rivers?

The deepest recorded river on Earth, the Congo has measured depths of about 220 m, and it is the only major river to cross the Equator twice.

Chad's blue, yellow and red tricolour is almost identical to the national flag of which European country?

Romania dropped the Communist emblem from its tricolour in 1989, leaving it a near-match for the flag Chad had adopted in 1959.

Cameroon takes its name from a river that Portuguese sailors named after which abundant seafood?

Shrimp were so plentiful in the Wouri River that Portuguese explorers called it Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English.

Ore from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Congo supplied which American programme of the 1940s?

The Manhattan Project built the first atomic bombs with ore from Shinkolobwe, which produced the most economical uranium in the world.

Which African capital on the Congo River is the largest officially French-speaking city in the world?

Kinshasa runs its government, schools and media in French, though Lingala is the lingua franca of the street and many residents struggle with French.

Which Joseph Conrad novella sends the sailor Marlow up an African river to find the ivory trader Kurtz?

Heart of Darkness drew on Conrad's own 1890 job aboard a Congo steamer, and it later inspired the Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now.

Which European country's king, Leopold II, ran the Congo Free State as his own private domain until 1908?

Belgium had no legal hold on the territory until 1908, when its parliament reluctantly annexed it under international pressure over the king's rule.

Which great ape, as closely related to humans as the chimpanzee, lives wild only south of the Congo River?

Bonobo ancestors were probably cut off when the river formed some 1.5–2 million years ago, since neither they nor chimpanzees swim well.

The DR Congo mines most of the world's supply of which metal used in rechargeable batteries?

Cobalt comes mostly from the Copperbelt that the country shares with Zambia, and demand has soared as phones and electric cars spread.

Which hero of the Cuban Revolution left Cuba in 1965 to lead a failed guerrilla campaign in the Congo?

Che Guevara soon became disillusioned with the poor discipline of the rebels he had come to train, and he was killed in Bolivia two years later.

The world's largest frog, native to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, is named after which biblical figure?

Goliath frogs can exceed 80 cm with legs outstretched, and may have grown so big because they shift heavy objects to build nests for their young.

Which Cameroon striker danced at the corner flag after each of his four goals at the 1990 World Cup?

Roger Milla was 38 and had retired from international football until Cameroon's president phoned to plead with him to rejoin the team.

Which gas burst from Cameroon's Lake Nyos in 1986, suffocating more than 1,700 people in nearby villages?

Carbon dioxide is denser than air, so the cloud hugged the ground and rolled down the valleys; a pipe now vents the lake's depths to prevent a repeat.

Which park in the eastern DR Congo, created in 1925, shelters mountain gorillas beside two active volcanoes?

Virunga was founded as the Congo's first national park, and guarding it is dangerous work: more than 170 of its rangers were killed in the 20 years to 2018.

Which primate of Gabon and Cameroon, with red and blue skin on its face, is the world's largest monkey?

Mandrill hordes in Gabon's Lopé National Park average 620 animals, possibly the largest cohesive groups of wild primates anywhere.

Which Cameroon striker won the Champions League with Barcelona and then Inter Milan in back-to-back seasons?

Samuel Eto'o scored in two Champions League finals for Barcelona and was named African Player of the Year four times.

Chad's volcanic Tibesti Mountains, crowned by the peak Emi Koussi, rise from the middle of which desert?

Sahara peaks get no higher than Emi Koussi, a shield volcano at the southern end of the largest mountain range in the desert.

Which Nobel Peace Prize-winning doctor and organist founded a hospital at Lambaréné in Gabon in 1913?

Albert Schweitzer took a pedal piano built for the tropics with him, and it reached the hospital by river in a huge dug-out canoe.

Which city is the capital of Cameroon, although the port of Douala is the country's economic hub?

Yaoundé was chosen as the colonial capital in 1922 under French rule, while Douala long remained the more important settlement.

Which Angolan capital, founded in 1576, has ranked among the world's most expensive cities for expatriates?

Luanda was founded by the Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais, which makes it one of the oldest colonial cities in Africa.

In the early 1900s, the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe became the world's largest producer of which crop?

Cocoa remains the country's most important crop; it followed the sugar plantations that the islands' rich volcanic soil first supported.

Which army chief seized power in the Congo in 1965 and ruled until 1997, famed for his leopard-skin hat?

Mobutu Sese Seko chartered Concorde for shopping trips to Paris and had an airport built with a runway long enough for it near his jungle palace.

Which first prime minister of independent Congo was dismissed within months and then killed in January 1961?

Patrice Lumumba's only surviving remains, a single gold-capped tooth, were handed back to his family in 2022, more than 60 years after his killing.

From 1971 to 1997, the DR Congo went by which name, taken from a Portuguese word for the Congo River?

Zaire came from a Portuguese mangling of the Kikongo word nzadi, meaning river, an odd choice for a campaign meant to restore authentic African names.

Which ruler of the Central African Republic crowned himself emperor in 1977 in a ceremony inspired by Napoleon?

Jean-Bédel Bokassa lost his throne less than two years after the coronation, toppled in a 1979 coup while he was away on a state visit to Libya.

Which capital of the Republic of the Congo served as the capital of Free France during World War II?

Brazzaville gave Charles de Gaulle a base from 1940, and it commemorates the Italian-born explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, who founded it in 1880.

Libreville, the capital of Gabon founded in 1849, has a name that is French for which other African capital?

Freetown is what Libreville means in French: the settlement began with 52 people freed from a slave ship by the French navy.

Which European power held Cameroon from 1884 until World War I, after which Britain and France divided it?

Germany lost the territory after its defeat, and the split into British and French mandates left Cameroon with two official languages.

Which journalist traced the Congo River to the Atlantic in 1877, then helped Leopold II claim its basin?

Henry Morton Stanley needed 999 days to cross the continent, and his later work for the king seriously damaged his reputation in the 20th century.

Which capital of Chad, known until 1973 as Fort-Lamy, stands where the Logone River meets the Chari?

N'Djamena comes from an Arabic term meaning place of rest, and it replaced a colonial name that honoured a French army officer killed in battle nearby.

Which lake on the DR Congo's eastern border, shared by four countries, is the world's longest freshwater lake?

Tanganyika holds more fresh water than any lake except Siberia's Baikal, and Tanzania and the DR Congo own most of it between them.

The CFA franc used by six Central African states, including Cameroon and Gabon, is pegged to which currency?

Euro pegging began in 1999, when it replaced the French franc as the anchor, and the Bank of France has printed the notes since 1945.

Which dance music of the two Congos, played by Franco and Papa Wemba, joined UNESCO's heritage list in 2021?

Rumba took shape in the 1940s and 1950s, when Cuban son records, widely mislabelled as rumba, transformed a local dance music called maringa.

Which 17th-century ruler of Ndongo and Matamba, in modern Angola, resisted Portuguese expansion for decades?

Queen Nzinga first made her name as an ambassador to the Portuguese; driven into exile in 1628, she conquered a neighbouring kingdom and ruled until 1663.

Coltan, an ore mined widely in the DR Congo, yields which metal used in the capacitors of mobile phones?

Tantalum gives coltan half its name: the word is short for columbite–tantalite, and the columbite half yields niobium.

Uranium ore from Oklo in Gabon showed in 1972 that which process ran there naturally two billion years ago?

Nuclear fission chain reactions switched on and off inside the ore, running for about 30 minutes and then cooling for two and a half hours.

Which rebel movement led by Jonas Savimbi fought Angola's government in a civil war that ended in 2002?

UNITA laid down its arms after Savimbi was killed in an ambush in 2002, and it went on to become Angola's second-largest political party.

Which oil-rich province of Angola is cut off from the rest of the country by a strip of the DR Congo?

Cabinda lies beside some of the largest offshore oil fields in the world, and an armed separatist struggle there outlasted Angola's civil war.

Which copper-rich southern province declared itself independent of the Congo under Moïse Tshombe in July 1960?

Katanga's copper supplied a third of the Congo's revenue, and the breakaway state lasted until United Nations forces ended it in 1963.

Which volcano in the eastern DR Congo sent lava streaming through the streets of the city of Goma in 2002?

Nyiragongo produced the fastest lava flow on record in 1977, when its crater walls fractured and the lava lake drained in less than an hour.

Which Cameroonian saxophonist's 1972 single Soul Makossa was later borrowed without credit by Michael Jackson?

Manu Dibango considered suing when a chant from the song turned up on the Thriller album, but Jackson admitted the borrowing and settled out of court.

Which Congolese gynaecologist shared the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for work with survivors of sexual violence?

Denis Mukwege founded Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in 1999 and kept demanding justice for victims despite threats against his life.

The final phase of the 1980s war between Chad and Libya is nicknamed after which make of pickup truck?

Toyota pickups, 400 of them armed with anti-tank missiles, gave Chad's troops the speed to rout a Libyan force that fielded 300 tanks.

The DR Congo is the second-largest country in Africa by area, behind only which North African country?

Algeria is the only African country that is bigger: the DR Congo covers about 2.3 million square kilometres and ranks eleventh in the world.