Volcanoes In The Congo Essay

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), located in central Africa, is the continent’s second largest country and has a population of approximately 81 million (The World Factbook, 2016). With 26 provinces, the DRC borders nine countries including Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, and Zambia, and is ranked the 11th largest country in the world with over 2.3 million square kilometers of land (The World Factbook, 2016). The DRC straddles the equator and has three distinct climates; hot and humid in the equatorial river basin, cool and wet in the eastern highlands and cool and dry in the southern highlands (The World Factbook, 2016). In the easternmost part of the DRC, the Rwenzori mountain range dominates, with it’s highest peak, Mount Stanley, rising at 5,110m above sea level (The World Factbook, 2016). Also in the eastern region of the DRC is the Great Rift Valley, along which the active volcanoes Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira are found (The World Factbook, 2016). Although their last eruptions were in 2002 and 2010 respectively, these volcanoes pose a significant natural threat for nearly one quarter of a million people

The four largest Bantu groups are Mongo, Luba, and Kongo and the Mangbetu-Azande (Hamitic) ethnic group makes up approximately 45 percent of the Congolese population (The World Factbook, 2016). There are a variety of languages spoken in the DRC including French as the country’s official language, Lingala as the lingua franca of trade, Kingwana (a dialect of Swahili), Kikongo and Tshiluba (The World Factbook, 2016). Fifty percent of Congolese people are Roman Catholic, twenty percent identify as Protestant, ten percent are Kimbanguist, another ten percent are Muslim and the remaining ten percent follow other belief systems such as syncretic sects or indigenous beliefs (The World Factbook,