Republic of Congo

Brazzaville — the capital of the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville, to distinguish from DR Congo across the river — 342,000km², 6 million people, a small oil-producing state in Central Africa) with the Brazzaville waterfront (where the Congo River is 4km wide and you can see Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo, from the opposite bank — the only place in the world where two national capitals face each other across a river) and the Basilique Sainte-Anne du Congo.

💡 Brazzaville and Kinshasa are the world’s closest pair of national capitals — only 4km apart across the Congo River (the world’s deepest river, reaching 220m depth between the two cities). The Congo River’s depth between the cities — combined with strong currents — makes this one of the most complex navigable stretches of inland water in the world. The ferry crossing between the two capitals operates daily and provides one of the most atmospheric international river crossings in Africa.

The Marché Total (Brazzaville’s main market — the busiest market in Central Africa, with the finest selection of wax print cloth, musical instruments, forest products, medicinal plants and street food in the region) and Poto Poto (the traditional quarter of Brazzaville where the Poto Poto School of Painting was established in 1951 by Pierre Lods — the school that launched the Central African modern art movement and whose graduates’ work is in major European and American collections).

💡 The Poto Poto School of Painting (established 1951 by French sculptor Pierre Lods who simply provided materials and time for Congolese painters without directing their style) produced a spontaneous explosion of figurative art depicting Congolese daily life, ceremony and myth — the first African modern art movement that developed without European aesthetic direction. Works by the Poto Poto painters entered the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and major collections worldwide within a decade of the school’s founding.

The river taxi ferry from Brazzaville Beach to Kinshasa Beach (a 20-minute crossing on a flat-bottomed pirogue, the most atmospheric international border crossing in Africa — if visa and security conditions permit, a day trip to Kinshasa, the largest French-speaking city in the world, with the Marche des Valeurs and the city’s famous music scene, the birthplace of rumba and soukous) and the Brazzaville’s Ba-Congo Museum.

💡 Kinshasa is the most populous French-speaking city in the world (15–17 million people — larger than Paris, Montreal or Brussels) and the fastest-growing megacity on earth by population growth rate. The 4km Congo River crossing from Brazzaville to Kinshasa is more than a border crossing — it connects the fifth-largest city in Africa (Brazzaville, 2 million) to what will likely be the largest city on earth by 2050.

1h flight. Odzala-Kokoua National Park (UNESCO Biosphere Reserve — 13,600km² of Congo Basin rainforest in the far north — with habituated western lowland gorilla groups (the only habituated groups in the Republic of Congo, allowing approach to 10m in the forest), forest elephants, bongo antelope, sitatunga and the Mboko Baï (a forest clearing where 150+ forest elephants gather daily at the mineral lick).

💡 Odzala-Kokoua has the only habituated western lowland gorilla groups in the Republic of Congo — habituated by African Parks researchers over 5+ years, these groups allow visitors to observe gorilla social behaviour (grooming, feeding, silverback displays, mother-infant interactions) from 10m without the gorillas showing signs of stress. The habituation of western lowland gorillas is more difficult than mountain gorillas; Odzala is one of only four locations in Africa where it has been achieved.

Lossi Gorilla Sanctuary (a community-managed gorilla conservation area near Odzala — one of the most studied western lowland gorilla populations in Africa, habituated over 15 years, with intimate observation of multiple groups by small visitor parties — the research station where great progress was made in understanding gorilla communication before an Ebola outbreak in 2002–2003 killed 130 of the 143 habituated individuals, and the slow recovery of the population since).

💡 The Lossi Gorilla Sanctuary was devastated by the Ebola virus outbreak of 2002–2003 — the same Zaire Ebola strain that is lethal to humans killed approximately 90% of the habituated gorilla population in a single outbreak (130 of 143 individuals died). The Lossi outbreak is the largest documented non-human great ape die-off from disease in recorded history and transformed scientific understanding of Ebola’s ability to decimate ape populations.

Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park (UNESCO World Heritage — shared with Dzanga-Sangha in the Central African Republic — in the far north of the Republic of Congo, one of the most pristine and biodiverse rainforest ecosystems in Africa, with forest elephants that have never seen humans (and therefore show no fear), western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, bongo and the last significant populations of forest buffalo in Central Africa).

💡 Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park (created 1993 largely as a result of J. Michael Fay’s Wildlife Conservation Society surveys — Fay famously described the forest elephants here as being “unafraid” of humans because they had never encountered them — covering 4,000km² of virtually unexplored Congo Basin forest) is considered by conservation biologists to be one of the last large tracts of rainforest in the world where the full pre-human mammal community remains essentially intact.

Brazzaville’s music scene (the city’s bars and live music venues — Brazzaville and Kinshasa together are the birthplace of Congo rumba and soukous (electric rumba), the most influential African dance music of the 20th century, whose rhythms influenced Cuban son, Afrobeat and R&B — still live every weekend in the bars of the Poto Poto and Bacongo districts) and the Centre Culturel Français (the finest regular music programming in the Congo). Fly from Brazzaville (BZV).

💡 Congo rumba (developed in Brazzaville and Kinshasa in the 1940s–1950s by artists including Franco Luambo and Joseph Kabasele — a synthesis of traditional Congolese rhythms, Cuban son brought back by Congolese musicians who heard it on Cuban radio broadcasts in the 1940s, and electric guitar — became the dominant dance music of sub-Saharan Africa and the foundation of modern soukous) is the most globally influential music genre ever to originate in Central Africa.