The Central African Republic (CAR) is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south, the Republic of the Congo to the southwest, and Cameroon to the west. The CAR covers a land area of about 620,000 square kilometres (240,000 sq mi). As of 2024, it has a population of 5,357,744, consisting of about 80 ethnic groups. Having been a French colony under the name Ubangi-Shari, Sango is its national language and was also its co-official language alongside French. Its capital and largest city is Bangui, which sits on the country's southern border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The CAR mainly consists of Sudano-Guinean savanna, but also includes a Sahelo-Sudanian zone in the north and an equatorial forest zone in the south. Two-thirds of the country is within the basin of the Ubangi River (a tributary of the Congo River), while the remaining third lies in the basin of the Chari River, which flows into Lake Chad.
The region has been inhabited since at least 8000 BCE. The borders were established by France, which began annexing portions to the French Congo in the late 19th century and in 1903 established the separate colony of Ubangi-Shari, part of French Equatorial Africa. After gaining independence from France in 1960, the CAR was ruled by a series of autocratic leaders, including Jean-Bédel Bokassa who changed the country's name to the Central African Empire and ruled as a monarch from 1976 to 1979. The Central African Bush War began in 2004 and, despite a peace treaty in 2007 and another in 2011, civil war resumed in 2012. The civil war perpetuated the country's poor human rights record, characterized by widespread and increasing abuses by various participating armed groups.
Despite the vast amounts of natural resources, such as uranium reserves, crude oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, lumber, and hydropower, as well as significant quantities of arable land, the CAR is among the ten poorest countries in the world, with the lowest GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) in the world as of 2017. As of 2023, according to the Human Development Index, the country had the third-lowest level of human development, ranking 191 out of 193 countries. The country had the second-lowest inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, ranking 164th out of 165 countries. It has been ranked as the unhealthiest country and the worst country for young people. The CAR is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of Central African States, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and the Non-Aligned Movement.
The name is derived from the country's geographical location in Central Africa and its republican form of government. From 1976 to 1979, the country was known as the Central African Empire.
During the colonial era, the country's name was Ubangi-Shari (French: Oubangui-Chari), a name derived from two major rivers, the Ubangi and the Chari. Barthélemy Boganda, the first prime minister, favored the name "Central African Republic" over Ubangi-Shari, reportedly because he envisioned a larger union of countries in Central Africa.
Approximately 10,000 years ago, desertification forced hunter-gatherer societies south into the Sahel regions of northern Central Africa, where some groups settled. Farming began as part of the Neolithic Revolution. Initial farming of white yam progressed into millet and sorghum, and before 3000 BCE the domestication of African oil palm improved the groups' nutrition and allowed for expansion of the local populations. This agricultural revolution, combined with a "Fish-stew Revolution", in which fishing began to take place and the use of boats, allowed for the transportation of goods. Products were often moved in ceramic pots.
The Bouar Megaliths in the western region indicate an advanced level of habitation dating to the late Neolithic (c. 3500–2700 BCE). Ironwork developed in the region around 1000 BCE. The Ubangian people settled along the Ubangi River, while some Bantu people migrated from the southwest of Cameroon.
Bananas arrived in the region during the first millennium BCE and added an important source of carbohydrates to the diet; they were also used in the production of alcoholic beverages. Production of copper, salt, dried fish, and textiles dominated the economic trade in the Central African region.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, slave traders began to raid the region as part of the expansion of the Saharan and Nile slave routes. Their captives were enslaved and shipped to the Mediterranean coast, Europe, Arabia, the Western Hemisphere, or to the slave ports and factories along the West and North Africa or south along the Ubangui and Congo rivers. During the 18th century Bandia-Nzakara Azande peoples established the Bangassou Kingdom along the Ubangi. In the mid 19th century, the Bobangi people became major slave traders and sold their captives to the Americas using the Ubangi to reach the coast. In 1875, the Sudanese sultan Rabih az-Zubayr governed Upper-Oubangui, which included present-day Central African Republic.
The European invasion of Central African territory began in the late 19th century during the Scramble for Africa. Europeans—primarily the French, Germans, and Belgians—arrived in the area in 1885. France seized and colonized Ubangi-Shari territory in 1894. In 1911 at the Treaty of Fez, France ceded a nearly 300,000 km2 portion of the Sangha and Lobaye basins to the German Empire which ceded a smaller area (in present-day Chad) to France. After World War I France again annexed the territory. Modeled on King Leopold's Congo Free State, concessions were doled out to private companies that endeavored to strip the region's assets as quickly and cheaply as possible before depositing a percentage of their profits into the French treasury. The concessionary companies forced local people to harvest rubber, coffee, and other commodities without pay and held their families hostage until they met their quotas.
In 1920, French Equatorial Africa was established, and Ubangi-Shari was administered from Brazzaville. During the 1920s and 1930s the French introduced a policy of mandatory cotton cultivation, a network of roads were built, attempts were made to combat sleeping sickness, and Protestant missions were established to spread Christianity. New forms of forced labour were introduced, and a large number of Ubangians were sent to work on the Congo–Ocean Railway. Through the period of construction until 1934 there was a continual heavy cost in human lives, with total deaths among all workers along the railway estimated in excess of 17,000 of the construction workers, from a combination of both industrial accidents and diseases including malaria. In 1928, a major insurrection, the Kongo-Wara rebellion or 'war of the hoe handle', broke out in western Ubangi-Shari and continued for several years. The extent of this insurrection, which was perhaps the largest anti-colonial rebellion in Africa during the interwar years, was carefully hidden from the French public because it provided evidence of strong opposition to French colonial rule and forced labour.
French colonization in Oubangui-Chari is considered to be the most brutal of the French Empire.
In September 1940, during the Second World War, pro-Gaullist French officers took control of Ubangi-Shari, and General Leclerc established his headquarters for the Free French Forces in Bangui. In 1946 Barthélemy Boganda was elected with 9,000 votes to the French National Assembly, becoming the first representative of the Central African Republic in the French government. Boganda maintained a political stance against racism and the colonial regime but gradually became disheartened with the French political system and returned to the Central African Republic to establish the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa (Mouvement pour l'évolution sociale de l'Afrique noire, MESAN) in 1950.