50 Fun Facts About Congo River

Which world record among rivers does the Congo River hold?

Deepest of all rivers, the Congo has been measured at about 220 metres (720 feet), in gorges where the lower rapids squeeze the whole flow together.

What does the Congo River do that no other major river does, thanks to its great arc through Central Africa?

Crosses the Equator twice: with land on both sides of the line, some part of the basin is always in a rainy season, which keeps the flow steady all year.

Which deadly virus, first identified in 1976, is named after a small river in the Congo River basin?

Ebola was first identified at Yambuku, but a virologist named it after a river 111 km away so that the town would escape the stigma.

Which primate lives only south of the Congo River, a barrier that split it from the chimpanzee?

Bonobo and chimpanzee are both poor swimmers, so the river that formed between them over a million years ago may have split one ancestor into two species.

Which Joseph Conrad novella follows a steamboat captain sent up the Congo River for an ivory company?

Heart of Darkness grew out of the author's own trip in 1890, when a Belgian trading company hired him to serve on one of its river steamers.

Which capital city stands directly across the Congo River from Kinshasa, within sight of the opposite bank?

Brazzaville and Kinshasa are the only two national capitals in the world that grew up on opposite banks of one river within sight of each other.

Which Welsh-born journalist led the first expedition to follow the Congo River down to the sea, in 1877?

Henry Morton Stanley later earned the local nickname Bula Matari, 'Breaker of Rocks', while building the first modern road along the river.

Which river, also flanked by rainforest, is the only one with a larger drainage basin than the Congo River?

Amazon and Congo rank first and second for both basin size and rainforest area; the African basin alone is nearly as large as the European Union.

Which shy forest animal of the Congo Basin has zebra-striped legs but is the giraffe's closest living relative?

Okapi sightings were so rare that Europeans in Africa spoke of an 'African unicorn'; science only formally recognised the species in 1901.

Which fruit shares its name with the small seaport on the north bank of the Congo River's mouth?

Banana sits on a creek sheltered from the ocean by a spit of land just 3 km long and no more than 400 metres wide.

Which river is the only one in Africa longer than the Congo River, which ranks second on the continent?

Nile waters travel farther, but the Congo carries far more of them: it is the most powerful river in Africa.

Into which ocean does the Congo River empty, at an average of about 41,000 cubic metres every second?

The Atlantic takes in so much Congo water that the river also delivers about 86 million tonnes of suspended sediment to it every year.

In which country does the Chambeshi River, the most remote headstream of the Congo River, begin as a mountain stream?

Zambia is where the Chambeshi feeds the Bangweulu Wetlands before its water continues north; counting it makes the whole river system about 4,700 km long.

What name does the upper Congo River carry above Boyoma Falls, before it officially becomes the Congo?

Lualaba is the name for some 1,800 km of the river, and 19th-century explorers argued over whether it fed the Congo or ran north towards Egypt.

Which chain of rapids below Kinshasa stops ships from sailing between the sea and the upper Congo River?

Livingstone Falls honour a missionary explorer who never saw them; the river drops 270 metres here through a channel that is mostly under 800 metres wide.

Which Congo River city, the farthest point boats can reach upstream from Kinshasa, sits just below Boyoma Falls?

Kisangani lies about 2,100 km from the river's mouth and began as a small outpost known simply as Falls Station.

Which European monarch claimed the Congo Basin as his own private property in 1885, under the name Congo Free State?

Leopold II never once visited the territory he owned, and reports of deaths and abuse there forced him to hand it to the Belgian state in 1908.

What was built between Matadi and Kinshasa in the 1890s so that cargo could bypass the Congo River's rapids?

A railway 366 km long replaced the human porters who had carried every load around the falls, a journey that was often fatal.

Which 1974 heavyweight title fight was staged in Kinshasa, with the Congo River flowing past the city?

The Rumble in the Jungle saw Muhammad Ali beat George Foreman before a television audience that some estimates put at one billion people.

Which ruler renamed his country Zaire in 1971, reviving an old Portuguese name for the Congo River?

Mobutu Sese Seko renamed himself as well, taking a title that speaks of an all-powerful warrior who goes from conquest to conquest.

Which huge Congo River predator has dagger-shaped teeth that slot into grooves along its jaws?

Goliath tigerfish can reach about 2 metres and 70 kg, which makes the species the largest member of its genus.

Which slow, plant-eating aquatic mammal lives in the lower reaches of the Congo River, near the sea?

Manatee numbers in Africa are highest in a handful of places, the lower Congo among them, where river animals graze on plants overhanging the banks.

Which legendary creature of the Congo River basin is often described as a living sauropod dinosaur?

Mokele-mbembe has drawn many expeditions into the basin's swamps, yet searches and aerial surveys keep finding elephants and never a dinosaur.

Which proposed dam scheme on the lower Congo River would generate almost double the power of China's Three Gorges?

Grand Inga would harness a 96-metre drop in the river at Inga Falls, where two smaller dams already run, but the scheme has been delayed for years.

Which major tributary of the Congo River forms the border between the DRC and the Central African Republic?

Ubangi is the largest tributary on the Congo's right bank, about 2,270 km long when measured together with its headstream, the Uele.

Which southern tributary of the Congo River is known for the diamonds found along its course?

Kasai water joins the main river northeast of Kinshasa, and its final stretch goes by a second name, the Kwa.

Which Portuguese navigator became the first European to reach the mouth of the Congo River, in 1482?

Diogo Cão marked the spot with a stone pillar bearing the Portuguese royal arms, one of several he carried aboard for the purpose.

Which 1884–85 gathering of European powers declared the Congo River free to shipping and its basin open to trade?

Berlin Conference invitations went to 13 European nations and the United States, but not to a single African country.

Which African Great Lake, the longest freshwater lake in the world, overflows into the Congo River through the Lukuga?

Tanganyika's outflow through the Lukuga varies widely with the lake's level; explorers in the 1870s found the exit silted up behind a sandbar.

Which sense has the whitish Congo River cichlid Lamprologus lethops almost entirely lost by the time it is an adult?

Vision is little use to a fish thought to live as far as 160 metres down in fast water, so its eyes are sealed under a thick layer of skin.

Which Vietnam War film starring Marlon Brando is a loose retelling of Joseph Conrad's Congo River novella?

Apocalypse Now is not a direct adaptation: director Francis Ford Coppola moved the story from the late 19th century to a river patrol in wartime.

Which forest product, tapped from wild vines, overtook ivory as the Congo Free State's main source of revenue?

Rubber had to be found on vines far out in the forest, and villagers told investigators the search left them no time to grow food.

Which dance music of the twin capitals on the Congo River joined UNESCO's heritage list in 2021?

Rumba got its name by mistake: imported Cuban son records were sold under that label, and bands on both banks built a new sound on them.

Kinshasa, the vast capital on the Congo River, is the world's largest city with which official language?

French is the language of government, schools and the media in Kinshasa, though many residents struggle to speak it.

What carbon-rich material did scientists find in 2017 beneath the swamp forests in the centre of the Congo Basin?

Peat under these swamps holds about 30 billion tonnes of carbon, as much as all the trees in the rest of the Congo Basin put together.

Which country holds the southern bank of the Congo River's mouth, where one of its provinces is still named Zaire?

Angola's city of Soyo stands there, on land that was once a province of the old Kingdom of Kongo.

What lies off the mouth of the Congo River in place of the delta that most great rivers build?

A submarine canyon with walls up to 1,100 metres tall carries the river's sediment far out to sea, in the strongest currents of their kind ever measured.

Which bird, better known from India, has a Congo Basin species that is the national bird of the DRC?

Peafowl from the Congo stayed unknown to science until an ornithologist spotted odd feathers in a headdress, then found two museum birds mislabelled as Indian.

How do the Wagenia people traditionally catch large fish in the roaring rapids of the upper Congo River?

Baskets hung from poles sieve the current, and the wooden frames stand in holes that the water itself has carved into the rock.

Which lake-like pool of the Congo River, about 35 km long, lies between Kinshasa and the capital facing it?

Malebo is named for the tall palms on its shores and islands; until 1972 the pool carried a European explorer's name instead.

Which country financed and built the Matadi Bridge, the 1983 suspension bridge across the lower Congo River?

Japan's engineers left their technical documents behind, and Congolese engineers used them to maintain the bridge for years after the support ended.

Which Bantu language grew from a traders' pidgin on the Congo River in the 1880s into the street language of Kinshasa?

Lingala spread further still as the language of the army and of the region's hit dance bands.

Which Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn adventure was filmed partly at Ubundu, a town on the upper Congo River?

The African Queen was shot there because its director had heard that the Belgian Congo was the better place for big-game hunting.

Which ominous name is given to the narrow gorge where the upper Congo River plunges below the town of Kongolo?

Gates of Hell, a translation of Portes d'Enfer, is the point where the river stops being navigable: no boat can pass through the gorge.

Which Congo River port, about 100 km from the sea, was the Congo's colonial capital before Kinshasa?

Boma began in the 16th century as a merchants' trading post, and seagoing ships can still sail up the river to its docks.

Which British consul, later executed for treason, wrote the 1904 report that detailed abuses in the Congo Free State?

Roger Casement has been called the father of twentieth-century human rights investigations, and he was knighted in 1911 for a similar inquiry in Peru.

Which Zanzibar ivory and slave trader was made governor of a Congo Free State district on the upper Congo River?

Tippu Tip built a trading empire that reached far into Central Africa, and used the proceeds to establish clove plantations back home.

Which Congo Basin national park, Africa's largest tropical rainforest reserve, was named a World Heritage Site in 1984?

Salonga has no roads, so most of the park can be reached only by boat along the rivers that wind through it.

Which reptile is represented in the Congo River basin by dwarf and slender-snouted species?

Crocodile species share the basin with by far the richest fish fauna of any river system in Africa, and new kinds of fish are still described from it regularly.

Which ivory trader is the steamboat captain sent to find in Joseph Conrad's novella set on the Congo River?

Kurtz has been traced by researchers to more than twenty possible real-life models among the traders and officers of the era.