Central AfricaCentral Africa, region of Africa that straddles the Equator and is drained largely by the Congo River system. It comprises, according to common definitions, the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa); Gabon is usually included along with the Central African Republic because of their common historical ties, both of these countries having once been part of French Equatorial Africa. Rwanda and Burundi, although they are located east of the East African Rift System, which

forms the eastern divide of the Congo basin, are also often considered part of the region because of their long administrative connections with the former Belgian Congo (now Congo [Kinshasa]). The island republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, off the Atlantic coast of Gabon, is also included in the region. Since its independence in 2011 South Sudan has been included in this region.

LandscapeThe landscapes of Central Africa are most often wide plateaus, which are smooth in the central part and etched at the periphery. The interior basin of the Congo River is joined to the Atlantic Ocean by a narrow neck traversing ridges parallel to the coast. The basin contains some marshlands in the region where the Congo, Ubangi, Likouala, and Sangha rivers converge and where Lakes Mai-Ndombe and Tumba are found. Its major part, however, consists of drier surfaces (low plateaus or alluvial terraces).

Higher plateaus, which extend through older sedimentary strata around the center of the Congo basin, reach an elevation of 2,600 to 3,000 feet north of Brazzaville and exceed 3,000 feet near the Angolan border to the south. In the north, a low divide of 2,000–2,300 feet separates the Congo River and its tributaries from the Chad basin. The landscape beyond the divide descends by steps toward Lake Chad. Southwest and south of the Chaillu Massif (3,000–3,300 feet) in Gabon and Congo (Brazzaville) are ridges,  traversed through deep and narrow gorges by the Kouilou and Congo. East of this complex the Congo River has

eroded a broad basin, known as Malebo Pool, into the upper sedimentary strata before cutting rapids farther downstream.

The most rugged terrain lies on the eastern fringe of the Congo basin. North of Lake Kivu and of Rwanda, the Virunga volcanoes form an east-west–trending range. The highest point in Central Africa, Margherita Peak (16,795 feet), whose summit bears residual features of glaciation, is located on the eastern fringe of the Rift Valley on the border of Congo (Kinshasa) and Uganda.

The Congo River basin is second only to that of the Amazon in rate of flow. In the central part of the basin, the quiet rivers make up one of the most attractive networks of navigable waters in the world, but this network is cut off from the Atlantic by a succession of rapids in western Congo (Kinshasa). Downstream from Matadi the river becomes navigable again before entering its estuary. All the rivers in the region flow down through rapids or waterfalls from the peripheral plateaus to the central basin. The rivers of the western region are navigable for only a few miles from their estuaries, though the Ogooué, in Gabon, which lies in a wider sedimentary coastal basin, is navigable for more than 100 miles.

Some parts of Central Africa lie within the Chad basin (northern Central African Republic) or the Nile basin (eastern Rwanda and northeastern Burundi, the Western Rift Valley north of the Virunga Mountains). Lava fields from the Virungas have blocked the outlet of an ancient hydrographic network previously oriented to the north. This created Lake Kivu; its waters discharge to the south, through the Ruzizi River gorge into Lake Tanganyika, one outlet of which links the lake with the Lualaba River and thus the Congo. The volcanic dam also caused a river course reversal in northern Rwanda, generating lakes and marshes.

Climate

Central Africa is characterized by hot and wet climates on both sides of the Equator. The equatorial strip that extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Western Rift Valley is influenced throughout the year by the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), resulting in intense, heavy precipitation. The mean annual temperatures in the region vary from 77 to 82 °F, and monthly means vary only a few degrees throughout the year. Annual rainfall exceeds 80 inches in coastal Gabon, in the center of the Congo basin, and on the mountain summits bordering the Western Rift Valley. There is no serious dry season, but in the extreme east and west there are two months (July and August) of lower rainfall. North and south of the equatorial strip the dry season increases in severity with latitude. It is driest in the Northern Hemisphere in January (when the area receives dry Saharan air masses) and in the Southern Hemisphere in July; the season lasts nearly seven

months in the far northern part of the Central African Republic and in far southern Congo (Kinshasa). Notwithstanding its low latitude and proximity to humid air masses, the coastal region of southwestern Central Africa has an abnormally long dry season with a low annual rainfall because of the presence of a cold marine current (the Benguela Current) along the coast. Highland areas tend to be wetter and cooler.

Equatorial Central Africa is covered by an evergreen forest with an area of almost 400,000 square miles. This rainforest—an exuberant world of high trees, rich in epiphytes and lianas—takes three main forms: permanently wet marshy forests at the confluence of the Ubangi and Congo rivers; gallery forests, which are subject to periodic flooding, along banks and river floodplains; and, most extensive, forests of dry land, either featuring a single dominant species or, more often, harboring a variety of species (sometimes several hundred per acre). This last type of forest is also found on the eastern slopes of the Congo basin, but it changes to high-altitude life-forms on the highlands of the Western Rift Valley.

The rainforest is surrounded by a patchwork of savannas and other forests. Savannas of poor, permeable sandy soils unevenly strewn with small trees cover the plateau surfaces, whereas subequatorial forests fill the valleys. Large areas of the savanna probably were created by slash-and-burn agricultural techniques, through which the original forest was cleared and the resulting grasslands maintained by periodic bushfires. Savannas also border the cooler and drier Atlantic coast of the two Congo republics, while mangrove thickets stretch along the banks of nearby estuaries, lagoons, and deltas.

Beyond this savanna forest region, the most distinctive vegetal formation is the dry tropical forest. Its trees are smaller and less dense than those of the equatorial forest, and they are deciduous, losing their leaves during the dry season. The dry tropical forest covers the southern Kwango and Katanga (Shaba) plateaus in Congo (Kinshasa) but exists only in shreds north of the Equator, in the Central African Republic. In the far north the thorny steppe is a typical Sahelian landscape.

With its steep gradients over short distances, rainy highlands, and relatively dry bottoms, the Western Rift Valley region is characterized by sharp vegetation contrasts. Central Africa’s most famous national park, Virunga National Park in Congo (Kinshasa), is home to elephants, lions, hippopotamuses, warthogs, forest hogs, okapis, and mountain gorillas on the volcano slopes. Also in the same region is Kahuzi-Biega National Park, which features mountain gorillas. In savanna or wooded savanna regions are Garamba National Park in northeastern Congo, well known for its white rhinoceroses, Upemba National Park in southern Congo, parks

in the northern part of the Central African Republic, and Akagera National Park in northeastern Rwanda. Other parks and reserves are located in the equatorial forest in Congo, such as Maiko and Salonga national parks.

National borders have split the territory of many ethnic groups. Twa(Pygmies) are scattered in the forests from Cameroon to the mountains surrounding Lake Kivu. The Fang of Gabon also occupy Equatorial Guinea and southern Cameroon. The Teke are spread throughout Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, and Congo (Kinshasa). The Kongo inhabit western Congo (Kinshasa), western Congo (Brazzaville), and Angola; the Chokweand the Lunda occupy Congo (Kinshasa) and Angola. In each country some major groups enjoy a numerically dominant position—for example, the Fang in Gabon and the Mboshi, Teke, and Kongo in Congo (Brazzaville). Burundi and Rwanda contain a Hutu majority, a Tutsi minority, and some Twa (Pygmies). In Congo (Kinshasa) the major groups are the Kongo (southwest), Mongo (central basin), Luba (south-central), Zande and Mangbetu (northeast), and Ngbaka (northwest). In the Central African Republic, the Baya, in the west, are the most numerous, but the Banda, in the center, occupy the largest territory. The islands of the Gulf of Guinea have a mixed population originating from Angola as well as from West and Central Africa because of their history as slave plantations and, later, as plantations with largely forced labor.

Most languages spoken in Central Africa belong to the Bantu group of the Niger-Congo language family. In northern Central Africa, Adamawa-Eastern and Sudanic languages are also spoken. The area’s rich linguistic diversity includes the use of lingua francas born of local languages, pidgin creoles (in the islands of the Gulf of Guinea), and European languages, which are the official languages of the various countries (Portuguese in São Tomé and Príncipe, French elsewhere). These lingua francas often overlap borders. 

Early Society and EconomyEarly Toolmakers

The oldest population of Central Africa is known almost exclusively from the evidence of its tools. Humankind had made a great intellectual step by learning how to fashion and use tools of a regular form for a specific purpose. The most famous of the Paleolithic tools are the Acheulian knives, known to scientists as “hand axes,” used to skin animals and cut meat into chunks.

The Agricultural RevolutionAbout 10,000 years ago Central Africa began to undergo an economic revolution. The northern border of Central Africa became one of the cradles of the world’s food-producing revolution. One of the first features of the new way of life in northern Central Africa was agriculture. The white Guinea yam was the basis of the new root farming, which enabled the population to grow in the northern savanna from about 5000 BC.

The second phase of the local agricultural revolution was even more important and had an impact over a wide area of the tropical world. Millet, a type of cereal based on wild seed of the millet and sorghum families was first developed in the northern savanna.

The third phase of the food-producing revolution which brought an increase in the scale of food production. One of the most valuable of the tree crops was the oil palm. The preparation of palm fruits to make cooking oil enhanced the nutritional quality of the diet with both proteins and vitamins, further enhancing health and leading to population growth and the search for new land to be colonized and cultivated.

A fourth and last aspect of early farming in Central Africa was the arrival of the banana family. Originally domesticated in the islands of Southeast Asia, bananas gradually spread until they had become a dominant crop in many parts of Central Africa. The two fundamental contributions of bananas were vegetable bananas (plantains) for cooking and sweet bananas for brewing. The banana flourished particularly well in the wetter areas, and in many societies it became the essential crop.

Another nutritional change paralleled the Agricultural Revolution- catching fish. Unlike hunters, fisherman and farmers could settle in more permanent villages.

Their diet was richer and more varied. They could own more possessions than simply the weapons and clothes they carried with them. They could make rafts and canoes to transport people and goods on the rivers and lakes. The most important technical innovation was the use of clay for making pots for cooking, brewing, and storing food or drink.

The growth of settled communities of hamlets and villages led to changes in architecture, social organization, land law and property rights, and warfare and the defense of territory. One important change was the spread of new languages which spread through trade. These came to be known as the Bantu languages, meaning simply the languages of the people, the bantu. Within 1,000 to 2,000 years the eastern Bantu languages had spread across the northern border of Central Africa to reach the highlands of East Africa.

In the deepest forest, however, the hunting societies were able to protect traditional values. Even the great social and political upheavals that accompanied the Iron Age did not unduly disturb their long-standing and highly specialized relationship with the tropical environment.

The Iron Age

The Iron Age reached Central Africa at about the same time it reached western Europe, some 3,000 years ago. The technological innovation of metalworking brought social and economic changes that were fundamental to the agricultural communities of the tropics.

Iron was a valuable commodity, both raw and worked into spears or machetes. Even more valuable, however, was copper. Copper was particularly appreciated for its color and luster and was used for personal jewelry, rings, bangles, chains, necklaces, and hair ornaments—all made with great craftsmanship and given to persons loved or revered. The demand for fresh copper rose with each new generation.

The three main zones of copper working in Central Africa were the Nile watershed, the eastern savanna, and the southwestern forest. Each industrial complex was a thousand miles from the next, and trade intensified as the demand for copper increased. In the north the copper was used to enhance the wealth and prestige of the local population, but it also fed into the long-distance trade networks of the southern Sahara. The third copper complex, on the lower Congo River, remained an important but localized industry until a later date. At the end of the 16th century, however, the miners discovered a new outlet for their copper in Europe and sold large quantities to sea merchants from the Netherlands in exchange for

Indian textiles, Chinese porcelain, South American tobacco, and stone jars of Dutch gin.

Growth of TradeThe development of the copper industry caused many of the peoples of Central Africa to look to their own resources for products that could be sold to buy the prestigious new metal and other exotic goods. The salt industry developed out of the needs of long-distance trade. The salt lagoons of the west coast became particularly important, and salt tracks ran far into the interior to agricultural communities without salt of their own to season the cereal dishes that were their staple food. Where salt was produced the industry became a focus for political power, and early states were formed.

The textile industry was another important industry that led to long-distance trade. The textile industry was controlled by princes who dominated the markets and supplied protection to the caravans who carried the bales of cloth. In western Central Africa the textile industry was based on fiber from the raffia palm. The quality of the finished product, was admired by the first foreign visitors to the region, and became the basis of colonial currency in the 17th century. Cloth provided one of the more durable and valuable possessions in every household. It therefore became the preferred item for social payments.

Another source of wealth that became important throughout the history of Central Africa was the trade in dried fish. The management of fishponds became one way in which the scale of political power increased from village size to state size. The ancestors of the Luba controlled the lakes of the eastern savanna. They controlled the fishing industry, building canoes and drying ovens, and setting up networks of trade paths along which porters carried tightly packed headloads of dried fish. In tropical conditions many foods were perishable, but dried fish could be preserved for months and carried to regions deficient in protein, where it was sold for high prices. The fish trade of the great rivers remained important, and fishermen were among the wealthier of the river dwellers. In the 20th century they motorized their canoes, refrigerated their catches, and used steamers for long-distance transport.

In most of Central Africa political management was on a small scale; the power brokers were men who gained influence in local communities. Kingdoms were not the norm. In a few places, however, administration was organized on a scale that went beyond a single day’s march from the central homestead. The most striking of the early kingdoms was that of the Kuba peoples, at the heart of the southern forest. Kuba kings built up trade networks that enabled them to obtain copper from far afield and, later, even to buy such valuable ornamental assets as cowrie shells

from the Indian Ocean, which were traded from community to community across Africa. Wealth, the ownership of livestock, the control of land, the mobilization of militias—these were the features of state formation in those rare areas where kingship could flourish. The Kuba knew government on a scale comparable to the early fish-trading states of the Luba and the raffia-weaving principalities of the Kongo kings.

Development of the Slave Trade

In the 15th century Central Africa came into regular contact with the non-African world for the first time. In the 15th century Central Africa opened direct relations both with the Mediterranean world of Islam and with the Atlantic world of Christendom. The Islamic contacts remained limited until the 19th century.

The Atlantic opening had an earlier and more direct impact on Central Africa than the Mediterranean opening. In the 1470s a colony of Portuguese was settled on the offshore island of São Tomé where they established fields of sugarcane and built sugar mills. This industry, which was later taken to Brazil and the Caribbean, became the richest branch of Europe’s colonial enterprise and had a lasting impact on the history of the African mainland. Settlers were unable to build plantations without help and bought mainland [African] slaves to work the estates. São Tomé became the frontline for the Atlantic slave trade, which was to have a deep and scarring influence on most of Central Africa.

Central African slaves taken to the island slave market were sold to three destinations. The strongest were sold to the Akan miners of the Gold Coast in West Africa, where royal Portuguese agents could buy up to half a ton of gold a year in exchange for imported commodities and slave workers. A second category of Central African slave was shipped to Europe and used both for domestic service and for farm labor. The third class of slave was put to work locally on the island.

The second attempt to build a European colony in Central Africa occurred in the kingdom of Kongo . Portuguese traders gained power by supporting a royal claimant, who adopted Christianity and assumed the title of Afonso I. The Portuguese had hoped to find precious metals, but found that the only way to make money was by purchasing slaves for the São Tomé market.

The great slaving campaigns began in the 1570s because of the rising demand for slaves to colonize Brazil. A series of armed assaults were launched on the states of the Mbundu peoples of the interior. Slaves were captured directly, obtained as ransom for important chiefs, or from long-distance trade networks that penetrated Central Africa both by river and by footpath.

The Dutch were the second colonial power to influence the history of Central Africa. They were more interested in ivory than in slaves. By the mid-17th century, however, the Dutch had established their own American colonies and so joined in the scramble for slaves. They began to sell guns to their trading partners to destroy old communities and capture fugitives. The supply and sale of powder, lead, and muskets became profitable to the coastal brokers but devastating to the inland victims.

The geographic scale of the Central African slave trade was enormous. By the 18th century the supply routes to the Atlantic reached the middle of the continent and had begun to intersect with the long-distance trade to the Indian Ocean. As the trade spread, Europeans needed political systems to help manage the traffic. The largest and most successful of the new merchant empires was the Lunda at the heart of the southern savanna who became aware of the slave trade in the 16th century. Lunda hunters entered Angola and recruited locals who formed armed groups that raided the countryside and sold their captives to European sailors. The Portuguese formed an alliance with the Lunda and allowed them to set up their own kingdom. As the market expanded, the Lunda were forced to expand the sources of supply. The Lunda empire spread its commercial network not only to the west but also eastward until it had outlets to the lower Zambezi River and the Indian Ocean. The Lunda effectively monopolized the slave trade of the heartland. As the Atlantic market grew, Lunda influence spread both north toward the forest and south into the dry plain of the upper Zambezi. In the early 19th century the court began to receive ambassadorial visits from representatives of the king of Portugal.

In the 18th century the French became the leading slave merchants on the north coast of the Congo region, and the scale of the trade grew rapidly. Congo captives became the dominant population in Saint-Domingue, later called Haiti, which rose to be the richest of all the world’s colonies and before 1791 the largest supplier of sugar. The slaves carried with them some of their cultural values and tried to reconstruct their communities under the shadow of the great plantation houses. Bantu vocabulary and personal names were added to the Creole speech of the Caribbean. Kongo religious practices were preserved when attempts were made to minimize the insecurity and suffering by worship and ritual. But, however much the slaves tried to reconstruct Central African society in the New World, their departure left a serious mark on the Old World. The scale of the French trade rose to about 10,000 men, women, and children each year. This loss was felt in spreading ripples, and the already frail population of Central Africa was further weakened. Not until the outbreak of revolution in France, and later in Haiti, did the French trade begin to decline.

The Central African population had declined and did not begin to recover until the beginning of the 20th century. Although two new crops introduced to the region from the Americas helped Central Africans recover from the ravages of slaving. The first was corn (maize), which required the same agricultural skills as millet and so could be easily adopted. The second new crop was cassava, or manioc, a root crop easily adopted by tuber farmers but more difficult for grain farmers to accept.

The growth of long-distance communication because of the Slave Trade also led to the spread of smallpox along the slave trails. During serious periods of warfare and raiding, populations were weakened by famine and so easily fell prey to measles and pneumonia. Central Africa was also a malarial zone, although the disease was most deadly for Europeans. Equally dangerous to Africans, especially in the 20th century, were epidemics of sleeping sickness, which periodically spread through the region. As though this were not enough, Central Africa was attacked in the early 20th century by the world influenza pandemic. The already weakened population became thinner still and did not recover until well into the middle of the 1900s.

The Central African slave trade continued into the 19th century. The Portuguese moved back into northern Central Africa when the French trade declined, and Brazil bought more slaves than ever before from Central Africa in the first half of the century, continuing to use slaves until the 1880s. Spain also entered the market to buy slaves for its American colony in Cuba, where the tobacco industry combined the modernization of the railway age with the old plantation use of slaves. While the end of four centuries of international slaving might have been expected to lead to a new era of freedom and opportunity in Central Africa, this did not happen. Instead, a whole new set of foreign forces began to penetrate the area.

ColonialismEstablishment of European colonies

The pioneer colonizer in Central Africa was Leopold II, king of the Belgians. He set up his colony (the Congo Free State) as a private, ostensibly humanitarian venture aimed at limiting the devastation of slaving and the liquor trade. To finance the venture, Leopold rented out nation-size fiefs to commercial companies that were licensed to make a profit and pay tax and tribute to the king. Companies took over the extraction of rubber from the Chokwe. Since the profits on rubber were low

compared with ivory or slaves, military force was used to “convince” villagers to give up farming and risk their lives in the forest to gather the vine sap. Rubber collecting became compulsory, and defaulters were barbarically punished by having their limbs amputated.

The humanitarian protest against the rule of Leopold was led by traders who had lost access to their former sphere of interest, by missionaries who deplored the denial of human rights, and by a British diplomat who believed in political freedom. Roger Casement (later Sir Roger) publicized the atrocities in the Congo Free State. Belgians were so horrified that in 1908 the Belgian government confiscated the colony from its own king in an attempt to end to the exploitation. Despite publicly condemning Leopold’s rule, rival colonizers wanted to make their colonies profitable and gave concessions to businesses and turned a blind eye to the large-scale use of forced labor.

The most immediate rival to Leopold in new colonies was Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of the new German Empire. Most of the colonies he created were outside Central Africa, but he did succeed in laying claim to one tiny but richly populated corner on the mountainous border of East Africa. The old kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi had thrived for centuries. In the late 19th century Burundi underwent severe dislocation, with conflicts over the monarchy and rivalry between chiefs and kings. The Germans moved in from Tanganyika and tried to impose order. They also took over the more stable kingdom of Rwanda.

Although the German intrusion into Central Africa was short-lived, a comparable French intrusion led to the creation of a much bigger and longer lasting equatorial empire. The French presence was confined at first to former slaving beaches on the Congo coast and Libreville, a haven for freed slaves. The explorer-turned-governor Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza hoped to join these coastal enclaves to the middle stretch of the Congo River, where the colonial capital was located. The French gained control over a huge stretch of northern Central Africa, which later became the diamond-rich Central African Republic.

The problems that France faced in Central Africa were like those faced by Leopold. The territories were huge, thinly peopled, and had few resources that could pay for colonial administration and make a profit for the colonizing power. Transportation was the greatest difficulty. Both France and Leopold were handicapped by the rapids on the lower Congo River and so each had, at huge cost in money and men, to build a railway to reach the navigable middle river. The French tried importing Chinese workers, who could be hired in Asia even more cheaply than local labor could be conscripted in Africa.

The French imitated Leopold, the British, and Portuguese, by awarding concessions to colonial companies that agreed to take responsibility for their own administration and infrastructure in return for the right to extract profits from subject peoples and conquered lands. The most notorious of the French colonial entrepreneurs made their money out of timber concessions. Only toward the end of the colonial period and after did French Equatorial Africa discover that it was rich in iron ore, petroleum, and uranium.

Economic OrganizationThe violent phase of Central African colonialism, involving the forced extraction of rubber, ivory, and timber, was followed by a more systematic phase of economic organization. One facet was the establishment of formal plantations on which to grow oil palms and rubber trees. These plantations required capital, machinery, and expensive foreign management. The expensive operation meant that workers were not paid adequate wages. The recruitment of labor became the duty of the colonial state or its licensed agents. Some workers accepted the incentive of a cash wage to buy material goods or to accumulate the necessary social payments for marriage. Others were driven into the wage sector by the imposition of cash taxes, which could be met only by working for colonial enterprises. But some were recruited on a compulsory basis—not as convicts deserving of punishment but as subjects who needed to be “civilized” by submitting to a work regime imposed by the state.

Where plantations did not develop, the colonial state found a means of extracting wealth from free peasants. They introduced compulsory crops, most notably cotton. Forced cotton imposed severe hardships on farmers, who could not grow food for their families but instead had to clear land to sow cotton for the state. When the crop succeeded, they received a small payment. But much of the cotton regime was applied to marginal lands, where it often failed. The risk was borne by the victim, and famine resulted. The planting of cotton led to frequent protests and to harsh repression in Central Africa, as it did in German East Africa and Portuguese West Africa.

The largest industrial complex to develop in Central Africa was the mining industry of the copper belt in what is now far southeastern Congo (Kinshasa). Two other mining zones added to the wealth of the colonial Congo: diamonds in the west and gold in the east. Between them the three mining zones were large-scale employers of unskilled labor. Some workers were temporary migrants who worked on contract and whose families subsisted on peasants’ incomes during their absence. Much of the burden of colonialism fell on women, who became heads of households and managers of family farms when the men were taken to the mines. Education and technical training became the road to economic advancement. The

Belgian colonial system maintained a paternal structure, and although more subjects became literate in Congo than in other colonies, few could aspire to higher skills or managerial posts. These positions were reserved for the white expatriate population.

The end of the colonial periodThe colonial period in Central Africa ended in 1960. Both France and Belgium decided that they could not resist the winds of change with armed force. Once the black nationalists of West Africa had won the right to self-determination from Britain, it was not deemed possible to deny the same rights in Central Africa. At a constitutional level, dramatic changes occurred: new constitutions were accepted, parliaments were elected, flags were flown, and anthems played. “Flag independence” in Central Africa, however, did not bring any real transformation to satisfy the high aspirations of former colonial subjects.

European Commission Trade with Central AfricaCentral AfricaThe EU is currently in negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement with Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe.

Cameroon signed an interim Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU in 2009.

Central Africa countries:Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo - Democratic Republic of (Kinshasa), Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, São Tomé & Principe

Regional integration remains a challenge for the economies in Central Africa. Regional trade lags behind compared to trade with developed countries outside Central Africa.

Oil dominates (70%) exports to the EU from the Central African countries. Only the Central African Republic do not export oil to the EU. Other main exports are cocoa, wood copper, bananas, and diamonds.

Imports from the EU into the Central African region are dominated by machinery and mechanical appliances, equipment, vehicles, foodstuffs and pharmaceutical products.

EU-ACP -- Central Africa: Trade in goods

Trade in goods 2014-2016, € billions

Year EU imports EU exports Balance

2014 9.4 6.9 -2.5

2015 8.3 6.8 -1.5

2016 6.3 5.3 -1.0

Date of retrieval: 15/02/2017

EU and Central Africa

The EU and Cameroon concluded negotiations on an interim Economic Partnership Agreement  in 2007. The agreement was approved by the European Parliament in June 2013 and ratified by Cameroon in July 2014. This agreement provides duty-free, quota-free EU access for all goods from Cameroon and a gradual removal of duties and quotas over 15 years on 80% of EU exports to Cameroon. Besides trade in goods, the interim agreement also covers aid for trade, institutional issues, and dispute settlement. It also includes "rendezvous" clauses providing for further negotiations on other trade-related issues such as competition policy, intellectual property, etc.

Gabon and Congo (Brazzaville) have not yet signed an Economic Partnership Agreement. Congo trades with the EU under the EU's Generalised Scheme of Preferences. As upper-middle income country (according to the World Bank classification), Gabon is no longer eligible for the new Generalised Scheme of Preferences scheme as of 1 January 2014.

As Least-Developed Countries, Chad, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, São Tomé and Equatorial Guinea all benefit from duty-free, quota-free EU access under the EU's "Everything but Arms" scheme.

The ongoing negotiations for a comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and Central Africa include areas such as rules and commitments on goods and rules of origin, services and investment, sustainable development, competition and trade facilitation. Cooperation on technical barriers to trade and sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards is also foreseen.

United Nations Department of Political Affairshttp://www.un.org/undpa/en/africa/central-africa

Central AfricaThe United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA) is a Special Political Mission with a regional mandate to help prevent conflict and consolidate peace in Central Africa. UNOCA makes available the UN’s good offices and other assistance to support preventive diplomacy and mediation in situations of tension or potential conflict. It also works closely with UN entities on the ground, governments, regional and sub-regional organizations to address cross-border challenges. These include arms trafficking, organized crime and the presence of armed and terrorist groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and Boko Haram.

 UNOCA was established through an exchange of letters completed in August 2010 between the United Nations Secretary-General and the Security Council, and was inaugurated in March 2011 in Libreville, Gabon. The Office is currently headed by the Secretary-General's Special Representative François Louncény Fall (Guinea).

Since May 2011, the Office is also the Secretariat to the UN Standing Advisory Committee on Security Issues in Central Africa (UNSAC).

UNOCA is the third regional political office attached to the Department of Political Affairs. Along with the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS) and the UN Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy in Central Asia (UNRCCA), these regional offices have demonstrated the value of preventive diplomacy and other assistance in helping regions to manage shared problems, crises and tensions peacefully.

Promoting coordination against the Lord's Resistance ArmyAt the request of the Security Council, UNOCA works with the AU, LRA-affected countries, UN partners and others to maximize the collective impact of actions to address the impact of the LRA. The Special Representative of the Secretary-

General for Central Africa and Head of UNOCA, SRSG François Louncény Fall, and the AU Special Envoy on LRA Issues, Lieutenant General (Rtd.) Jackson Kiprono Tuwei, work together to help ensure sustained political commitment by the governments of the four affected countries: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Uganda and the necessary support of their partners.

In addition, UNOCA has worked closely with the UN Office to the African Union, UN entities in the LRA-affected areas, and the African Union to develop a regional strategy, which was adopted by the Security Council in 2012, to counter the LRA as well as to address the impact of its activities and promote collective action. In this context, UNOCA convenes on a semi-annual basis a meeting of LRA focal points involved on the issue. This is an opportunity to assess the situation in LRA affected countries as well as discuss priorities in the implementation of the UN regional strategy to address the LRA threat.

UNOCA also coordinates the UN’s support for the operationalization of the African Union-led Regional Cooperative Initiative for the elimination of the LRA and the African Union Regional Task Force.

Central Intelligence Agency The World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2032.html

Environmental Issues

AngolaOveruse of pastures and subsequent soil erosion attributable to population pressures; desertification; deforestation of tropical rain forest, in response to both international demand for tropical timber and to domestic use as fuel, resulting in loss of biodiversity; soil erosion contributing to water pollution and situation of rivers and dams; inadequate supplies of potable water

The Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville)Air pollution from vehicle emissions; water pollution from raw sewage; tap water is not potable; deforestation

The Central African Republic

Tap water is not potable; poaching has diminished the country’s reputation as one of the last great wildlife refuges; desertification; deforestation

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa) Poaching threatens wildlife populations; water pollution; deforestation; soil erosion; mining (diamonds, gold, coltan - a mineral used in creating capacitors for electronic devices) causing environmental damage

Gabon Deforestation; burgeoning population exacerbating disposal of solid waste; oil industry contributing to water pollution; wildlife poaching

RwandaDeforestation results from uncontrolled cutting of trees for fuel; overgrazing; soil exhaustion; soil erosion; widespread poaching

BurundiSoil erosion as a result of overgrazing and the expansion of agriculture into marginal lands; deforestation (little forested land remains because of uncontrolled cutting of tress for fuel); habitat loss threatens wildlife populations

São Tomé and PríncipeDeforestation; soil erosion and exhaustion

South SudanInadequate supplies of potable water; wildlife populations threatened by excessive hunting; soil erosion; desertification; periodic drought