Central African RepublicCentrafrique · Ködörösêse tî Bêafrîka

Before colonial rule the region lay between the Muslim sultanates of the Sahel and the forest peoples of the Congo basin. In the 19th century slave raiders from Darfur, Wadai and the Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr depopulated large parts of the north and east, and the sultanate of Dar al-Kuti, based at Ndélé, sold captives north.

France founded Bangui in 1889 and organised the territory as Ubangi-Shari, handing most of it to concession companies that forced people to collect rubber and grow cotton. The Kongo-Wara revolt of 1928–31, led by Karnou, was crushed. Barthélemy Boganda, a Catholic priest turned politician, led the movement for independence and dreamed of a 'United States of Latin Africa'; he died in an unexplained plane crash in 1959, a year before independence on 13 August 1960.

Jean-Bédel Bokassa seized power in 1966, crowned himself emperor in a coronation costing about a third of the national budget in 1977, and was removed by French paratroopers in 1979 after soldiers massacred schoolchildren. Coups and mutinies followed under Dacko, Kolingba, Patassé and Bozizé. In March 2013 the Séléka, a coalition of mostly Muslim rebels from the north-east, took Bangui; the anti-balaka militias that rose against them attacked Muslim civilians, and much of the Muslim population fled.

French troops (Operation Sangaris) and an African Union force intervened, followed in 2014 by the UN mission MINUSCA. Faustin-Archange Touadéra was elected in 2016 and turned to Russia for security support from 2018; Russian contractors and Rwandan troops helped repel a rebel coalition that attacked Bangui in January 2021. A 2023 referendum removed presidential term limits, and Touadéra was re-elected for a third term in December 2025.

Some 80 ethnic groups live in CAR, the largest being the Gbaya in the west and the Banda in the centre and east; the Yakoma and Ngbaka along the Ubangi river have supplied many political leaders. Fulani (Peul) herders move cattle through the savanna, often in conflict with farmers. Sango, a lingua franca that began as a trade language on the Ubangi, is spoken by almost everyone, making CAR one of the few African countries with a truly national African language.

Most people are Christian, and a Muslim minority lives mainly in the north-east and in Bangui's PK5 trading district. The 2013–14 violence was not a religious war in origin — it grew out of politics, arms and grievances — but it was fought along religious lines, and its trauma remains.

In the south-western forests the Ba'Aka are known for polyphonic singing, listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage, and for their knowledge of the forest, which has made them essential trackers in gorilla habituation programmes.

CAR is a plateau between 500 and 1,000 m, draining south to the Ubangi and Congo and north to Lake Chad. Rainforest covers the south-west, savanna and wooded grassland the centre and north. The rainy season runs roughly May to October in the north and longer in the south.

Dzanga-Sangha, in the south-western corner, is part of the UNESCO-listed Sangha Trinational with Cameroon and Congo. Its Dzanga Bai draws forest elephants by the dozen, and WWF-supported programmes habituated western lowland gorillas with Ba'Aka trackers; tourism there has been sporadic because of the country's security. In the north, Manovo-Gounda St Floris National Park, once rich in elephants, rhinos and giraffes, has been on UNESCO's danger list since 1997 after heavy poaching. The Chinko reserve in the east, run by African Parks since 2014, is trying to rebuild wildlife in a vast wilderness.

Diamonds and gold from alluvial mines have financed armed groups on all sides; the Kimberley Process suspended CAR's diamond exports in 2013 and has partly readmitted some zones.

Meals are built on cassava — as gozo, a stiff dough — with leaf sauces such as ngunza (cassava leaves) and koko (gnetum), groundnut sauces, river fish and, in the forest, caterpillars and mushrooms in season. Palm wine and a strong local cassava spirit, ngouli, are common; coffee is grown in the south-west.

Music in Bangui mixes Congolese rumba from across the river with local styles; the group Musiki and singers such as Laetitia Zonzambé are well known locally. Sango radio, church choirs and football fill the week.

Bokassa's palace ruins at Berengo, the colonial riverside of Bangui and the market of PK5 are the places Central Africans point to when talking about their history.