Republic of the Congo
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47 free Republic of the Congo trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Republic of the Congo trivia quiz is about Congo-Brazzaville, the smaller of the two Congos, and only the smaller one: its capital facing Kinshasa across the river, the Italian-born explorer who founded it, its stint as the capital of Free France, its years as Africa's first Marxist-Leninist people's republic, and its oil, its swamp-forest gorillas and its impeccably dressed sapeurs. The early questions cover the map and the flag; the later ones get into Tio kings, the Congo-Ocean Railway, Marien Ngouabi and the 1972 Africa Cup of Nations. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer. If you want the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that is a separate quiz. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1942 Hollywood classic ends with its heroes bound for the Congolese capital?
Casablanca
Casablanca ends with Captain Renault suggesting that he and Rick lie low at the garrison in the Congolese capital; a sequel named after that city was announced but never made.
Q 02The Congolese capital sits directly across the Congo River from which other national capital?
Kinshasa
Kinshasa, capital of the DR Congo, faces the Congolese capital across the river, yet as of 2025 no bridge joined them: one has been planned for years, so the crossing is made by boat.
Q 03Which dance music, shared by both Congos, joined UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2021?
Rumba
Rumba, in its Congolese form, was listed on a joint bid by the two Congos; it took shape when local bands absorbed imported Caribbean records, music whose own roots enslaved Africans had carried across the Atlantic.
Q 04By what nickname is the Republic of the Congo told apart from its larger neighbour across the river?
Congo-Brazzaville
Congo-Brazzaville takes its capital's name to set the smaller republic apart from the far larger Democratic Republic of the Congo across the river.
Q 05Which of these countries shares a land border with the Republic of the Congo?
Cameroon
Cameroon touches the Congo's far north-west, one of only five land neighbours; Nigeria, Chad and Zambia are each cut off from it by at least one other country.
Q 06The Congolese capital is named after an explorer for France who was born in which country?
Italy
Italy: born Pietro Savorgnan di Brazzà, the son of a count from Friuli, he grew up in papal Rome, studied in Paris, joined the French navy and took French citizenship before his Congo expeditions.
Q 07Which virus wiped out thousands of gorillas in the Congo's north-western forests in the early 2000s?
Ebola
Ebola killed at least 5,000 gorillas in and around one north-western sanctuary, more than nine in ten of those in its path, spreading from one gorilla group to the next.
Q 08During World War II, the Congolese capital served as the symbolic capital of what?
Free France
Brazzaville became the symbolic capital of Free France in 1940 after French Equatorial Africa rallied to de Gaulle, and the 1944 Brazzaville Conference went on to reshape French colonial policy.
Q 09In 1969 the Congo became the first country in Africa to declare itself what?
A Marxist-Leninist state
A Marxist-Leninist state was what the People's Republic of the Congo called itself until the ruling party dropped Marxism in 1990; multi-party elections followed in 1992.
Q 10Which organisation chose the Congo's president as its chairman in January 2006?
The African Union
The African Union picked him as a compromise: members were split over Sudan's bid for the chair, so the Congo's leader was chosen instead.
Q 11The daughter of Congo's long-serving president married which neighbouring head of state in 1989?
Omar Bongo of Gabon
Edith Lucie Sassou Nguesso married Gabon's Omar Bongo in 1989 and served as his first lady until her death in 2009, binding the two oil-producing neighbours for two decades.
Q 12Who was the first President of the Republic of the Congo, from independence in 1960?
Fulbert Youlou
Fulbert Youlou, a former Catholic priest and fervent anti-communist, became the first president at independence in 1960 and was toppled by the three-day 'Trois Glorieuses' uprising in August 1963.
Q 13President Marien Ngouabi, who proclaimed the People's Republic, met what fate in March 1977?
Q 21The Congo-Ocean Railway, built after World War I, cost at least how many lives?
14,000
At least 14,000 lives is the low estimate and others exceed 17,000: forced labourers were marched in from as far as present-day Chad and the Central African Republic to build the line between 1921 and 1934.
Q 22The Congo River is Africa's second-longest and holds which global title?
Deepest ever recorded
Deepest ever recorded: soundings of about 220 metres in the lower river, deep and fast enough to split fish populations apart so that separate species have evolved side by side.
Q 23The Congo River is the only major river in the world to do what?
Cross the equator twice
He was assassinated
He was assassinated in Brazzaville on 18 March 1977; a military committee of his own party took over, with Joachim Yhombi-Opango as head of state.
Q 14The private militia that fought for Sassou Nguesso in the 1997 civil war was known by what name?
Cobras
The Cobras were his own militia, some 8,000 strong and recruited mostly in the thinly peopled north, his home region; they fought the government's forces in the capital from June 1997.
Q 15Which country's army invaded the Congo in October 1997 to install Sassou Nguesso in power?
Angola
Angola sent troops across the border in October 1997 and tipped the war to Sassou Nguesso; Pascal Lissouba's elected government fell, and Sassou took office as president on 25 October.
Q 16The Congolese flag is a yellow diagonal band separating triangles of which two colours?
Green and red
Green and red triangles flank the yellow band; adopted in 1959, the flag was replaced by a Soviet-style red banner under the People's Republic and restored in 1991.
Q 17On the People's Republic of the Congo's flag, which tool took the sickle's place beside the hammer?
Hoe
A hoe crossed the hammer under a gold star, wreathed in palm branches on a plain red field; the flag flew from 1970 until the regime fell in 1991 and the old tricolour came back.
Q 18What is the second-largest city and main economic centre of the Republic of the Congo?
Pointe-Noire
Pointe-Noire grew from a fishing village into the republic's port and oil hub after it was chosen in 1923 as the ocean end of the railway from the capital.
Q 19Which chain of rapids begins on the Congo River just downstream of the Congolese capital?
Livingstone Falls
Livingstone Falls honours a man who never saw them: Stanley named the 350 km run of rapids for David Livingstone, who explored only the upper river; they bar ships from the sea.
Q 20The Congo-Ocean Railway links the capital with the coast over roughly what distance?
500 km
About 500 km of track (502 on the timetable) bypass the rapids of the lower river, so cargo brought down by boat from the interior can go on by rail to an ocean port.
Cross the equator twice is what its great arc does, so part of the basin is always in a rainy season and the river's flow stays unusually steady all year.
Q 24Which Portuguese explorer was the first European to reach the mouth of the Congo?
Diogo Cão
Diogo Cão reached the Congo's mouth in the early 1480s and raised a stone pillar there to claim it for Portugal; centuries of coastal trade, including in enslaved people, followed before colonisation began.
Q 25Which international organisation did the Republic of the Congo join in 2018?
OPEC
OPEC admitted the Congo in June 2018, by which time oil had long since replaced forestry as the mainstay of the economy.
Q 26In 2004 a certification scheme expelled the Congo over suspected smuggling of which export?
Diamonds
Most diamonds the Congo exported were suspected of being smuggled in from the DR Congo, so the Kimberley Process expelled it in 2004; it was readmitted in 2007.
Q 27Alongside French, which two languages are national languages of the Republic of the Congo?
Kituba and Lingala
Kituba and Lingala are the two national languages beside official French; Kituba is a lingua franca built on Kikongo, which is why across the river it is called Kikongo ya leta.
Q 28The Congo's long-ruling president belongs to which northern ethnic group, the country's third largest?
Mbochi
Mbochi people are only about 13% of the population, far behind the southern Kongo at roughly 40%, yet a Mbochi officer took the presidency in 1979 and, voted out in 1992, fought his way back in 1997.
Q 29Which NBA shot-blocker, a 2019 champion with Toronto, was born in the Congolese capital?
Serge Ibaka
Serge Ibaka left Brazzaville as a teenager to play in Spain, took Spanish citizenship in 2011 and won Olympic silver with Spain a year later, well before his title with the Raptors.
Q 30In 2010 the Congolese parliament adopted Africa's first law of what kind?
Indigenous peoples' rights
The 2010 law on indigenous peoples' rights was Africa's first of its kind, responding to reports that some Pygmies were held by Bantu families in relationships described as slavery.