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| - The Republic of Congo, where veteran President Denis Sassou Nguesso hopes to extend his three decade-long grip on power in Sunday's elections, is oil-rich but saddled by debt. This is an overview of the central African country, which sits on the western side of the Congo River across from the even larger Democratic Republic of Congo: Nearly two-thirds of Congo, which is slightly smaller than Germany, is covered with forest, making it the planet's second ecological lung after the Amazon. The Nouabale-Ndoki National Park is a UNESCO world heritage site and home to rich flora and fauna, including important populations of forest elephants and endangered lowland gorillas and chimpanzees. The vast majority of Congo's 5.2 million people are Christian. The capital Brazzaville was named after its founder, French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, and is located along the Congo River. Since its independence from France in 1960 Congo has suffered a succession of coups, attempted putsches and insurrections. The 1990s was a particularly bloody decade, with three civil wars that left tens of thousands of people dead, and the southern Pool region remains volatile. Elite paratrooper Denis Sassou Nguesso has ruled Congo on and off for 36 years since 1979, first during the one-party system until 1992. He then returned to power in 1997 at the end of one civil war. Since then he has been elected in votes contested by the opposition in 2002, 2009, and again in 2016 after a new constitution was adopted that removed presidential age and term limits. That election sparked protests in Brazzaville and an armed conflict in Pool. Sassou Nguesso, 77, has successfully snuffed out opposition, notably in 2018 when two of his main rivals -- army general Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko and ex-minister Andre Okombi Salissa -- were sentenced to 20 years' forced labour for breaching internal state security and illegal possession of weapons of war. Congo has great agricultural potential and enormous natural resources that it has not fully exploited, but its economy is heavily dependent on oil. The industry represents just over half its GDP, and oil makes up 85 percent of its exports and 80 percent of its budget. Congo has been gripped by a devastating economic and social crisis since 2014 when a drop in the price of crude oil pushed it to appeal to the International Monetary Fund for help. It has since been saddled with huge debt. In 2020 the country's GDP contracted by 6.8 percent according to the African Development Bank. Poor infrastructure and widespread corruption also hobble Congo, with Transparency International classing it 165th out of 179 countries in its index. Congolese author Alain Mabanckou is among the world's best-known writers in French, celebrated in English for his comic novels "Broken Glass" and "Black Bazaar". Dubbed the Samuel Beckett of Africa for his sly, sometimes absurd sense of humour, Mabanckou is a professor at UCLA in Los Angeles and an outspoken critic of Sassou Nguesso. Like many of his compatriots he is a snappy dresser, an aficionado of the "sapeur" tradition which Brazzaville shares with the other Congo's capital Kinshasa, where men and women dress to impress. The name derives from the Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes (Society of Ambiance Makers & Elegant People), or La Sape for short. acm-ang-eab/fg/tgb
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