Central African Republic

From the megaliths of Bouar to a fragile peace at the heart of Africa

Landlocked at the continent's centre, the Central African Republic carries one of Africa's deepest archaeological records in the standing stones of Bouar and one of its harshest modern histories. Slave-raiding from the Sudanic states and traders such as al-Zubayr depopulated much of the Ubangi region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; French conquest then bound it into a brutal concessionary-company regime within French Equatorial Africa. Independent since 13 August 1960, the country endured the imperial pretensions of Jean-Bédel Bokassa, repeated coups, and a sectarian civil war after the 2013 Séléka seizure of power, leaving it dependent on the UN mission MINUSCA and foreign actors for a precarious stability.