DR Congo–Republic of the Congo border

Stanley and de Brazza

Between 1875 and 1882 the French naval officer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza explored the lands between the Ogooué and the Congo, and in 1880 signed a treaty with the Teke kingdom securing part of the Congo’s north bank for France. Henry M. Stanley, working for King Leopold II, reached Stanley Pool (Pool Malebo) on 27 July 1881 and founded Leopoldville, today’s Kinshasa, on the south bank; the French post was then moved to the north bank, where it became Brazzaville.^[1]

From the Angolan tripoint the border runs about 220 miles along the Shiloango, a drainage divide and other rivers, then down the Congo for 500 miles and up the Ubangi for 290 miles to the Central African Republic. Except in Stanley Pool, its exact line in the Congo was still undefined in 1972.^[1]

A planned bridge

In 2018 the two governments and the African Development Bank signed up to a road-rail toll bridge over the Congo, with a border checkpoint at each end, estimated in 2017 to cost US$550 million. The bank said some 750,000 people and 340,000 tonnes of freight a year crossed between the capitals by ferry, and that the idea of linking them dated back to the mid-19th century.^[2] Until then, Africanews noted, travel between them was restricted to boats or planes.^[3]

“The two closest capitals in the world are currently only linked by ferries.”^[2]