The Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a country in central Africa with a small length of Atlantic coastline. It is the third largest country (by area) in Africa.The country straddles the Equator, with one-third to the North and two-thirds to the South. The size of Congo, 2,345,408 square kilometers (905,567 sq mi), is slightly greater than the combined areas of Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Norway.Formerly the country was divided into eleven ...provinces. However, the constitution approved in 2005 divided the country into 26 fairly autonomous provinces, including the capital, Kinshasa to be formed by 18 February 2009. These are subdivided into 192 territories.

The tropical climate has also produced the Congo River system which dominates the region topographically along with the rain forest it flows through, though they are not mutually exclusive. The river basin (meaning the Congo River and all of its myriad tributaries) occupies nearly the entire country and an area of nearly one million square kilometers (400,000 sq mi). The river and its tributaries (major offshoots include the Kasai, Sangha, Ubangi, Aruwimi, and Lulonga) form the backbone of Congolese economics and transportation. They have a dramatic impact on the daily lives of the people.

The Congo is the world's largest producer of cobalt ore, and a major producer of copper and industrial diamonds. It has significant deposits of tantalum, which is used in the fabrication of electronic components in computers and mobile phones. In 2002, tin was discovered in the east of the country, but, to date, mining has been on a small scale . Smuggling of coltan and cassiterite, the ores of tantalum and tin, respectively, has helped fuel the war in the Eastern Congo. Katanga Mining Limited, a London-based company, owns the Luilu Metallurgical Plant, which has a capacity of 175,000 tonnes of copper and 8,000 tonnes of cobalt per year, making it the largest cobalt refinery in the world.

Kinshasa is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as Zaire from 1971 to 1997. The city is located on the Congo River. Once a site of fishing villages, Kinshasa is now an urban area with a population of nearly 8 million in 2007. The city of Brazzaville (about 1.5 million inhabitants in 2007 with its suburbs), capital of the Republic of Congo, lies just across the Congo River from Kinshasa. Together with Brazzaville, the combined conurbation of Kinshasa-Brazzaville has thus nearly 11 million inhabitants. Because the administrative boundaries cover such a vast area, over 60% of the city's land is rural in nature. Kinshasa ties with Johannesburg for the status of the second largest city in sub-Saharan Africa and the third largest in the whole continent after Lagos and Cairo. It is often considered the second largest francophone city in the world after Paris, though on criteria such as number of native speakers Montreal retains this distinction, as African languages, especially Lingala, are more widely spoken in Kinshasa than French. If current demographic trends continue, Kinshasa will surpass Paris in population before 2020.