Geography
Congo (DRC) Quiz
A country the size of Western Europe with the world's deepest river and half its coltan.
A country the size of Western Europe with the world's deepest river and half its coltan.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo supplies roughly 70% of the world's cobalt — the mineral at the heart of every smartphone battery and electric vehicle on the planet. Yet the DRC remains one of the world's least developed countries, a paradox that encapsulates its entire modern history. This quiz takes you through the country's extraordinary geography, its brutal colonial past under King Leopold II, independence and the Cold War assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Mobutu's three-decade kleptocracy, the deadliest conflicts since World War II, and the biodiversity of the Congo Basin rainforest.
Each round presents 10 randomized questions from a pool of 50, with four multiple-choice options and instant feedback after every answer. Your final score comes with a performance tier and shareable results.
You'll explore the DRC's status as Africa's second-largest country by area (2.34 million km²), Kinshasa as the world's largest French-speaking city, the Congo River as the world's deepest river at over 220 metres, the Congo Basin as the world's second-largest tropical rainforest, King Leopold II's rubber terror and mass atrocities, Patrice Lumumba's assassination, Mobutu Sese Seko's Zaire, the First and Second Congo Wars with over 5.4 million deaths, the DRC's stranglehold on global cobalt and coltan supply, mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park, and the unique okapi.
There are two separate countries named Congo that sit on opposite banks of the Congo River. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as Congo-Kinshasa, is the much larger country — Africa's second-largest nation by area — with its capital at Kinshasa. The Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), with its capital at Brazzaville, is a smaller, separate nation on the north bank of the river. The two capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, face each other across the river and form one of the world's closest pairs of capital cities.
Coltan (columbite-tantalite) is refined into tantalum, a heat-resistant metal used in capacitors found in virtually every mobile phone, laptop, and electronic device. The DRC holds an estimated 64–80% of the world's known coltan reserves. During the Second Congo War, control of coltan mines became a key driver of conflict, with armed groups and neighbouring countries exploiting the resource. The mineral wealth of the DRC — coltan, cobalt, gold, diamonds, and more — is sometimes called a "resource curse," as it has fuelled conflict rather than development.
King Leopold II of Belgium personally owned the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908 — not as a Belgian colony but as his private property. He imposed a brutal system of forced labour to extract rubber and ivory. Villagers who failed to meet rubber quotas had their hands amputated, and soldiers were required to prove kills by presenting severed hands. Historians estimate that between 10 and 15 million Congolese people died from violence, starvation, and disease during this period — roughly half the population at the time. International outrage, driven by journalist E.D. Morel and photographer Alice Seeley Harris, eventually forced Leopold to hand the territory to the Belgian state in 1908.
Last updated: March 2026