Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a country in Central Africa centered on the Congo Basin. By land area it is the second-largest country in Africa and the eleventh-largest in the world, with a population of around 124 million people, making it the most populous Francophone country in the world.
The country has been called the Congo Free State, the Belgian Congo, the Republic of the Congo-Léopoldville, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of Zaire before returning to its current name. President Mobutu Sese Seko renamed it Zaire in October 1971, and Laurent-Désiré Kabila restored the name Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997.
Patrice Lumumba was the first Prime Minister of the independent Republic of the Congo, taking office on the 24th of June 1960. He was handed to Katangan authorities and executed by Belgian-led Katangan troops on the 17th of January 1961. A 2001 investigation by Belgium's Parliament found Belgium morally responsible for his murder.
The most widely reported estimate for the Second Congo War death toll is 5.4 million people, though other estimates put it at three million. It has been described as the deadliest conflict since World War II and ran from 1998 to 2003.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo possesses 80 percent of the world's cobalt reserves and produced 70 percent of global supply in 2023. Cobalt is essential to the lithium-ion batteries that power many electric vehicles, which led the firm AllianceBernstein in February 2018 to call the country the Saudi Arabia of the electric vehicle age.
Despite untapped mineral deposits estimated to be worth more than 24 trillion dollars, the DRC is one of the world's poorest countries and a prominent example of the resource curse. An estimated 73.5 percent of people lived below the international poverty line of 2.15 dollars a day as of 2024, and the country ranked 171 out of 193 on the 2023 Human Development Index.