Republic of the Congo
Brazzaville's oil republic on the great river's northern bank
The Republic of the Congo, often called Congo-Brazzaville to distinguish it from its giant neighbor across the river, is a heavily forested, oil-rich nation perched on the equator. More than half its people cluster in the two riverside cities of Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire, leaving vast tracts of rainforest nearly empty - a wilderness that makes it one of the world's most urbanized yet most forested countries at once. Crude oil from offshore fields dominates the economy, while the northern jungles shelter some of the last strongholds of lowland gorillas and forest elephants.
The land rises from a narrow Atlantic coastal plain through the forested Mayombe hills to interior plateaus and the broad northern basin of the Congo River system. The Congo and its tributary the Ubangi trace the eastern border, with Brazzaville facing Kinshasa across the river - the only place on earth where two national capitals sit directly opposite one another. Dense equatorial rainforest blankets much of the country, part of the second-largest rainforest on the planet after the Amazon. Mont Nabeba near the Cameroon border is the highest point at around 1,020 meters.
The region's kingdoms gave way to French colonial rule as part of French Equatorial Africa, with Brazzaville serving as its capital. Independence came in 1960, followed by decades of Marxist-Leninist government and a brutal civil war in the late 1990s that returned Denis Sassou Nguesso to power, where he has remained. French is the official language, layered over Kikongo, Lingala, and other Bantu tongues. Oil wealth has funded ambitious infrastructure even as much of the population remains poor, and the country markets its northern parks as a frontier for gorilla tourism.