Marie Ndjeka Opombo is the former Ambassador of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the United Kingdom, replaced by Ndolamb Ngokwey in 2023. [1] [2] She is also a non-resident Ambassador to Norway. [3]
When she was fifteen, she went to Belgium to study at the Higher Institute of Economic Science and the Institute of Higher Education in Social Communication, graduating with a teaching degree. She went on to earn a Business English degree from Manchester University. [4]
Katanga was one of the four large provinces created in the Belgian Congo in 1914. It was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba, and Haut-Katanga provinces. Between 1971 and 1997, its official name was Shaba Province.
Leopold II was the second King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909, and the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Kinshasa, and known from 1971–1997 as Zaire, is a country in Central Africa. By land area, the DRC is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of around 112 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous officially Francophone country in the world. The national capital and largest city is Kinshasa, which is also the economic center. The country is bordered by the Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, the Cabinda exclave of Angola and the South Atlantic Ocean.
Pointe-Noire is the second largest city in the Republic of the Congo, following the capital of Brazzaville, and an autonomous department and a commune since the 2002 Constitution. Before this date it was the capital of the Kouilou region. It is situated on a headland between Pointe-Noire Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Pointe-Noire is the main commercial centre of the country and has a population of more than 1 million inhabitants since 2018.
Tetela, also Sungu, is a Bantu language of northern Kasai-Oriental Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is spoken by the Tetela people.
William Lacy Swing was a diplomat and former United States Ambassador, and United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Under Secretary General. He was the Director-General of the International Organization for Migration until António Vitorino's appointment in 2018.
Denis Mukwege is a Congolese gynecologist and Pentecostal pastor. He founded and works in Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where he specializes in the treatment of women who have been raped by armed rebels. In 2018, Mukwege and Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict".
Hélène Mambu-ma-Disu is a Congolese public health expert, physician, pediatrician and United Nations diplomat. She served as a Regional Adviser for the African regional office of the United Nations' World Health Organization, and later went on to serve for 18 years as a World Health Organization Resident Representative in several countries in the region, before retiring in 2008. She is currently Senior Program Officer for the Sustainable Immunization Financing Program of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, for whom she coordinates field activities in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, and Madagascar.
Michael A. Hammer is an American diplomat who is serving as the United States Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa as of 2022. A career member of the United States Foreign Service, Hammer previously served as the United States ambassador to Chile from 2014 to 2016 and the United States ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2018 to 2022.
In 2014, an outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) occurred. Genome sequencing has shown that this outbreak was not related to the 2014–15 West Africa Ebola virus epidemic, but was of the same EBOV species. It began in August 2014 and was declared over in November of that year, after 42 days without any new cases. This is the 7th outbreak there, three of which occurred during the period of Zaire.
The 2018 Équateur province Ebola outbreak occurred in the north-west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from May to July 2018. It was contained entirely within Équateur province, and was the first time that vaccination with the rVSV-ZEBOV Ebola vaccine had been attempted in the early stages of an Ebola outbreak, with a total of 3,481 people vaccinated. It was the ninth recorded Ebola outbreak in the DRC.
Central African Republic–Democratic Republic of the Congo relations refers to the current and historic bilateral relationship between the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The two countries are neighbours and share a border 1,747 km long. Due to the military conflicts on both sides of the border, many refugees have crossed into the other's territory. There were about 200,000 Congolese nationals in the Central African Republic as of 2014, and there were around 100,000 Central African refugees in the DRC as of 2016.
The Apostolic Nunciature to the Democratic Republic of the Congo is an ecclesiastical office of the Catholic Church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a diplomatic post of the Holy See, whose representative is called the Apostolic Nuncio with the rank of an ambassador. The nuncio resides in the Gombe, Kinshasa district of Kinshasa, the capital city.
Events in the year 2021 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Else Nizigama Ntamagiro became Burundi's Ambassador to Germany and the Vatican in 2016.
Luca Attanasio was an Italian diplomat who served as the ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2017 until his murder there in 2021.
Luca Attanasio, the Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was killed on 22 February 2021 along with two other people when a World Food Programme (WFP) delegation travelling on a field visit was attacked by armed individuals. The two-vehicle convoy with seven people was travelling in the Congolese province of North Kivu, from the province's capital of Goma to a WFP school feeding programme in Rutshuru, a town 70 kilometres north of Goma, on a route that would have taken the vehicles through Virunga National Park. The attack occurred at 10:15 a.m. local time near the townships of Kibumba and Kanyamahoro. The WFP and North Kivu governor Carly Nzanzu said the convoy did not have a security escort at the time of the attack. In 2023, six men were convicted of murder.
Bintou Keita is a United Nations diplomat from Guinea. She is an expert in conflict resolution. Since January 2021, she has been the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Marie-Hélène Mathey Boo Lowumba was named ambassador of the Democratic Republic of Congo to the United States on January 11, 2022, by Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi. She is preceded by Ambassador François Nkuna Balumuene. Prior to her appointment, she served as Ambassador of the Republic of Congo to Gabon, Minister of Industry, Commerce, and Weights & Measures in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Director of External Relations and Governance of the World Health Organization (WHO) among other positions. As a descendant of Koko Mwato I, Marie-Hélène Mathey Boo is the 12th Chief of Bokoli in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Mai-Ndombe Province.