Democratic Republic of the Congo
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50 free Democratic Republic of the Congo trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Democratic Republic of the Congo trivia quiz covers the giant of Central Africa, the country once called Zaire and, before that, Leopold II's Congo Free State. It runs from Stanley and Conrad through independence, Lumumba and Mobutu's leopard-skin hat, the Rumble in the Jungle, two Congo wars and the cobalt boom, and it does not skip the wildlife: okapis, bonobos, mountain gorillas and the lava lake of Nyiragongo. Congolese rumba, Papa Wemba, the Leopards of 1974 and Dikembe Mutombo are here too. The opening questions suit anyone who can find Kinshasa on a map; the last ones test people who know why Ebola is called Ebola and what an abacost is. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer. The smaller Republic of the Congo across the river has its own quiz. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
Kinshasa
Kinshasa stands where navigation on the Congo begins: cataracts downstream make the river impassable to boats from the sea, so traffic for the interior has long set out from here.
Q 02Which dance music of the two Congos, named like its Cuban cousin, joined UNESCO's heritage list in 2021?
Rumba
Rumba came home: Central African rhythms crossed to Cuba with the slave trade, returned on records in the 1930s, and Congolese musicians recognised the beat and made it their own.
Q 03The Congo's Shinkolobwe mine supplied the Manhattan Project with which raw material?
Uranium
Uranium ore from Shinkolobwe was far richer than any other known, and about 1,200 tonnes of it were already stockpiled in a Staten Island warehouse when the bomb project went looking in 1942.
Q 04By area, the DRC is the second-largest country in Africa after which?
Algeria
Algeria took the title only in 2011, when South Sudan broke away from Sudan, until then the largest country in Africa.
Q 05The DRC is the most populous country in the world to have which official language?
French
French arrived with colonial rule, yet the DRC's roughly 110 million people now far outnumber the 68 million who live in France.
Q 06Which king ran the Congo Free State as his personal possession from 1885?
Leopold II
Leopold II never set foot in the Congo, yet rubber gathered there by forced labour made him a fortune until an international outcry forced him to give the territory up in 1908.
Q 07Which British consul, later hanged for treason, wrote the report exposing atrocities in the Congo Free State?
Roger Casement
Roger Casement was knighted for a later report on rubber-trade abuses in Peru, then hanged in 1916 after seeking German help for Ireland's Easter Rising.
Q 08Who was the first prime minister of the independent Congo, assassinated in January 1961?
Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba was shot by a firing squad and his body dissolved in acid; a single gold-capped tooth, taken by a police officer, was returned to his family in 2022.
Q 09Which mineral-rich southeastern province declared independence within days of the Congo's own in 1960?
Katanga
Katanga's breakaway cost the UN its leader: Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld died in a 1961 plane crash on his way to ceasefire talks with the secessionists.
Q 10Who seized power in the Congo in 1965 and ruled as a dictator until 1997?
Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko grew so rich in office that he built palaces in the remote jungle town of Gbadolite, with a runway long enough for the Concordes he chartered to Europe.
Q 11Under the 1970s 'authenticité' campaign, Congolese men had to wear the abacost, a name abbreviating what?
'Down with the suit'
'Down with the suit' translates the slogan 'à bas le costume': Western suits and ties were banned as colonial relics, and the tieless jacket became the uniform of the ruling elite.
Q 12Before its renaming in 1966, what was the capital of the Congo called?
Léopoldville
Léopoldville lost its colonial name six years after independence, in the same 1966 sweep that turned Stanleyville into Kisangani and Élisabethville into Lubumbashi.
Q 13The 1974 'Rumble in the Jungle' in the Congolese capital saw Muhammad Ali beat which undefeated champion?
George Foreman
Q 21Disease rather than fighting caused most deaths in the Second Congo War; which illness was a leading killer?
Malaria
Malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea and hunger did most of the killing, because the war wrecked health services and cut people off from food; surveys put violent deaths at under a tenth of the total.
Q 22Congolese Nobel Peace laureate Denis Mukwege works in which profession?
Gynaecologist
Gynaecologist Denis Mukwege opened Panzi Hospital as a maternity clinic, but war soon filled it with rape survivors, and his team has since treated tens of thousands of them.
Q 23The Ebola virus is named after what?
A river
A river: the Ebola, in the north of the country. The team that identified the virus in 1976 would not name it after Yambuku, the village where it struck, to spare the place the stigma.
George Foreman, 25 and unbeaten, wore himself out punching while Ali covered up on the ropes, the 'rope-a-dope', and was knocked out in the eighth round.
Q 14The okapi, endemic to the northeast DRC, is most closely related to which animal?
Giraffe
Despite its zebra-striped legs, it and the giraffe are the only living members of the family Giraffidae.
Q 15The DRC is the only country in the world where which great ape lives in the wild?
Bonobo
Bonobos live only along the south bank of the Congo River; unlike their chimpanzee cousins, their groups are run by females, whose lead the males tend to follow.
Q 16Which primatologist began her mountain gorilla study in the Congo in 1967 before unrest drove her into Rwanda?
Dian Fossey
Dian Fossey had been at her first Congolese camp only months when soldiers marched her down the mountain; she got away and founded her famous Karisoke base across the border that September.
Q 17Which park in the eastern DRC, founded in 1925, was Africa's first national park?
Virunga
Virunga began as Albert National Park, created chiefly to protect the mountain gorillas on its volcanoes; the rangers who guard them work in a war zone, and many have been killed on duty.
Q 18Mount Nyiragongo, a volcano in the eastern DRC, is known for what feature in its main crater?
A lava lake
A lava lake usually sits in the crater, and Nyiragongo's lava is so runny that in 2002 it poured from the mountain's flank through the city at its foot, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless.
Q 19Lithium gets the headlines, but the DRC mines most of the world's supply of which other battery metal?
Cobalt
Cobalt from the DRC made up about three-quarters of world mine output in 2024; some of it is dug by hand in narrow tunnels, where Amnesty International found children as young as seven at work.
Q 20The Second Congo War of 1998–2003 is often called what?
Africa's World War
Africa's World War pulled in the armies of nine countries and set the Congolese government against Rwanda and Uganda, the very allies that had helped it take power a year earlier.
Q 24The DRC's flag is sky blue with a red diagonal stripe and what in the upper left corner?
A yellow star
A yellow star marks the corner of a 1960s design brought back in 2006; for a quarter of a century before 1997 the country flew a green flag showing an arm holding a flaming torch.
Q 25Under what name did the DRC become the first sub-Saharan side at a World Cup, in 1974?
Zaire
Zaire is remembered for a 9–0 defeat and for the defender who charged out of the wall and booted the world champions' free kick away, a protest, he later said, at the players going unpaid.
Q 26DR Congo's national football team plays under which nickname?
The Leopards
The Leopards won the Africa Cup of Nations in 1968 and again in 1974, when the final had to be replayed and striker Ndaye Mulamba scored all four of their goals over the two games.
Q 27Which Congolese-born NBA centre was famous for wagging a finger after blocking a shot?
Dikembe Mutombo
Dikembe Mutombo came to America to study medicine before a college coach spotted the 7ft 2in student; he later built a hospital back home and named it after his mother.
Q 28Congolese singer Papa Wemba was also the figurehead of which fashion movement?
La Sape
La Sape, whose 'sapeurs' spend heavily on designer suits, had Papa Wemba as its style icon; he died in 2016 after collapsing on stage in the middle of a concert.
Q 29Which 1899 Joseph Conrad novella follows a steamboat captain's journey up the Congo River?
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness grew out of Conrad's own 1890 stint on a Congo River steamer for a colonial trading company, a journey that showed him the cruelty he put into the book.
Q 30Which Congo explorer is best remembered for the greeting 'Dr Livingstone, I presume'?
Henry Morton Stanley
Henry Morton Stanley was a reporter on assignment: the New York Herald funded his 1871 search for the missing missionary, and later helped pay for the expedition on which he followed the Congo River to the sea.