This is The Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo contains an abundance of natural resources, yet it has long suffered from political instability and centuries of colonial exploitation, determining little widespread development. From the 15th to the 17th century several state systems developed in the southern savanna region, such as the Kongo kingdom in the west and the Luba-Lunda states in the east. In the tropical rainforest, however, the conditions were not favorable to state formation and small village communities were the rule. In the 1870s, European exploration of the Congo Basin was carried out under the sponsorship of Leopold II of Belgium, who then declared the land his private property, naming it the Congo Free State. Leopold designed his administration to extract not only the maximum amount of natural resources but also the maximum output of labor from the people, which caused the death of millions of Congolese and a legacy of anti-Western sentiment and subsequent generations of nationalists in power. These events eventually prompted Belgium to take over the administration of the Congo. After independence in 1960, the country officially became the Republic of Zaire under the ruler Gen. Mobutu Sese Seko, who sought to give the country a more authentic African name (“Zaire” means “great river” in local African languages). Following the overthrow of Mobutu’s brutal government in 1997, the country’s prior name was reinstated and the Congo crisis started: the devastating civil war officially only ended in 2003, although fighting continued in the East.
