The Central African Republic is a landlocked Central African republic. It is bounded to the north by Chad, to the northeast by Sudan, to the southeast by South Sudan, to the south by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the southwest by the Republic of the Congo, and to the west by Cameroon.
The Central African Republic has a land area of around 620,000 square kilometers (240,000 sq mi). In 2018, its population was expected to be over 4.7 million people. The Central African Republic is still in the grip of a civil conflict that began in 2012. The Central African Republic is mostly made up of Sudano-Guinean savannas, but it also has a Sahelo-Sudan zone in the north and an equatorial forest zone in the south. The Ubangi River basin (which drains into the Congo) contains two-thirds of the nation, while the other third is in the Chari River basin, which flows into Lake Chad.
The Central African Republic has been inhabited for millennia, but the nation's present boundaries were defined by France, who administered the region as a colony beginning in the late nineteenth century. Following its independence from France in 1960, the Central African Republic was controlled by a succession of dictatorial dictators, including an unsuccessful attempt at monarchy.
Calls for democracy in the 1990s resulted in the first multi-party democratic elections in 1993. Ange-Félix Patassé was elected president, but was deposed by General François Bozizé in a coup in 2003. The Central African Republic Bush Conflict started in 2004, and despite peace treaties in 2007 and 2011, the civil war reignited in 2012. The country's dismal human rights record was exacerbated by the civil war, which was marked by widespread and rising violations by different participating armed groups, including arbitrary incarceration, torture, and limits on freedom of the press and travel.
Despite significant mineral deposits and other resources such as uranium reserves, crude oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, lumber, and hydropower, as well as significant amounts of arable land, the Central African Republic is one of the world's ten poorest countries, with the lowest GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in 2017. According to the Human Development Index (HDI), as of 2019, the nation has the second-lowest level of human development (just ahead of Niger), ranking 188 out of 189 countries. The nation ranked 150th out of 150 in terms of the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). The Central African Republic is also regarded as the unhealthiest and most dangerous nation for young people.
The Central African Republic is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of Central African States, the International Francophonie Organization, and the Non-Aligned Movement.