Ubangi-Shari

  

Republic of the Ubangi-Shari République de l'Oubangi-Chari (French) Ködörösêse tî Oubangî-Charî (Sango)
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: "Zo Kwe Zo" (Sango) "All people are people"
Anthem: "La Renaissance" (French) "E Zingo" (Sango) "The Renaissance"
National seal
Capital and largest city	Bangui
Official languages	French · Sango
Religion	89% Christianity 9% Islam 2% other
Demonym(s)	Ubangian
Government	Unitary semi-presidential republic
• President	Marcelin Boutouli
• Prime Minister	Marie-Josèphe Kéthévoama
• President of the National Assembly	Serge Kago
Legislature	National Assembly
Independence  from France
• Declared	December 1, 1958
• Recognized	August 13, 1960
• Empire founded	December 4, 1968
• Republic restored	September 29, 1991
Area
• Total	622,984 km2 (240,535 sq mi)
Population
• 2022 estimate	7,454,533
GDP (PPP)	estimate
• Total	KS$
GDP (nominal)	estimate
• Total	KS$
Currency	Ubangian franc (XFA)
Time zone	UTC+1 (West Africa Time)
Date format	dd/mm/yyyy (AD)
Driving side	right
Internet TLD	.us

Ubangi-Shari, officially the Republic of the Ubangi-Shari (French: République de l'Oubangî-Charî, Sango: Ködörösêse tî Oubangi-Chari), is a country in Central Africa. It borders Chad to the north, Sudan to the east, Darfur to the northeast, Zaire to the south, the Nilotic Republic to the southeast, and Cameroon to the west. The country is named for two rivers: two-thirds of its territory is within the Ubangi River basin (which flows into the Congo River), while the remaining third lies in the basin of the Chari River, which flows into Lake Chad. Most of the terrain of Ubangi-Shari consists of savannas, with the exception of small areas of equatorial rainforest in the south along the Zairian border and desert-like dry savannas in the north along the Chadian border. The capital and largest city is Bangui, and the country has an estimated population of 7.45 million people as of 2022, including among them at least 80 different ethnic groups. French is the lingua franca among all of the country's ethnic groups and is one of the two official languages, while the other is Sango, the most widely-spoken indigenous language.

The territory of modern Ubangi-Shari has been inhabited for millennia, but the borders of the current state were drawn up by France during the scramble for Africa in the 19th century. The entire modern territory of the country was a French colony by 1903, and it remained so until the defeat of France in Great War I, which led to the French West and Central African colonies being given to Germany. The French language and period of rule has had a much more significant influence on Ubangi-Shari than did the two decades of German colonial rule, with the German language and culture not having much of a lasting impact on the Ubangian people. As the decolonization of Africa began immediately after Great War II, an anti-colonial political movement in the country contributed to Ubangi-Shari being granted independence by Germany in 1960. Since independence Ubangi-Shari has been ruled by a series of autocratic and military governments.

There was an initial period of democracy, with Alphonse Kolingba of the Central African Democratic Union becoming elected president. But in 1968 he was overthrown in a military coup by Jean-Paul Malendoma, who then declared himself Emperor of a new monarchy. His leadership during the Cold War received some support from Western governments to prevent Marxist-Landonist movements from taking power in the region. The Empire of Ubangi-Shari lasted until 1991, when, after years of economic decline and a lack of development, he abdicated under pressure from all of the political forces in the nation. Timothée Auzingoni succeeded him as president, and his party, the Ubangian Democratic Rally, won the majority of seats in the National Assembly in 1992 elections. Although he promised to restore democracy, he and his party dominated the political system for two decades, with widespread allegations of election-rigging and creating a patronage system. In 2003, the Ubangi-Shari Bush War broke out as rebel groups in the northern part of the country demanded that he resign and started fighting government forces. The conflict also gained ethnic and religious dimensions, as the rebel movement was taken over by Muslim jihadi groups, and has been an ongoing civil war since 2004. In 2020, Auzingoni was overthrown in a military coup, and army officer Marcelin Boutouli declared the creation of a National Transitional Council to oversee the Ubangian transition to democracy by 2025, and to end the insurgency in the north of the country.

Ubangi-Shari has one of the lowest standards of living in the world, including high rates of poverty and malnutrition. It is considered one of the least developed countries by the World Bank, with a low-income economy that mainly relies on forestry and agriculture, along with exporting minerals such as diamonds, gold, and cobalt, and is the poorest country in the world by per capita GDP as of 2022, at around KS$400. The war in the northern and central parts of the country has also prevented infrastructure from being developed, with very few paved roads, no railroads or domestic airlines, and a limited telecommunications network. The vast majority of the population outside of the capital, Bangui, lives on subsistence agriculture.

Since 2020 it has had a transitional government that has promised to organize free elections, after decades of one-party rule, and was formed after negotiations between the military and the leading opposition parties, with mediation by the African Union. There is a significant foreign troop presence in the country, primarily the African Union Mission in Ubangi-Shari, along with a small number of League of Nations peacekeepers. Ubangi-Shari is a member of the League of Nations, the African Union, and the Economic Community of Central and Southern African States, among other international organizations.

Etymology

The name of the state comes from the two rivers in the region, the Ubangi and the Chari. Ubangi is the word for "rapids" in the Bangi language, the Central African dialect of Lingala. It became the name of the French local administration in the region in 1903, within the larger territory of French Equatorial Africa. The first constitution of the Republic, adopted in 1958, declared the name of the country "the Republic of the Ubangi-Shari."

From 1968 to 1991 the country was called the Empire of the Ubangi-Shari. After the abdication of Emperor Jean-Paul Malendoma in September 1991, the form of government and the name were changed back from empire to republic.

Government and politics

Marcelin Boutouli
President of Ubangi-Shari

Ubangi-Shari is formally a unitary semi-presidential republic with a standard division of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The President is the head of state and the head of the executive branch, while the Prime Minister is the head of government answers to both the president and the National Assembly, the legislature, as both have the power to remove the prime minister and the government from office. The National Assembly has 140 seats and is elected every four years on the basis of proportional representation voting. The judiciary consists of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, with judges appointed by the president with the approval of the National Assembly.

Although this has been the structure of the state as explained by 1991 constitution, which itself was very similar to the original 1958 constitution, in practice the Ubangian political system has not functioned this way for the majority of the country's history. Between 1960 and 1968 there was a period where free elections and a true division of powers between branches was relatively successful, but that was ended by the 1968 military coup led by General Jean-Paul Malendoma. He established a nominal constitutional parliamentary monarchy, which was in reality an absolute monarchy under a military dictatorship. During the period of monarchy, rival political parties were declared illegal and civil rights were limited, security forces arrested dissidents, and what few parliamentary elections took place were carefully controlled. The abdication of the emperor in 1991 changed the political situation, with more freedoms being granted by the new government, but President Timothée Auzingoni largely continued the pattern of autocratic rule, creating what the Economist Intelligence Unit described as a "hybrid regime" in 2016, where a patronage system, managed elections, and voter fraud guaranteed that he and his party remained in power. Because of this, the government of Ubangi-Shari was a dictatorship of different forms for the majority of its existence.

In October 2020, Auzingoni was forced out of office by a military coup. General Marcelin Boutouli declared himself interim president and the start of a transitional administration, for a period of five to six years, for a full "transition to democracy." An agreement was reached between the largest opposition party in the National Assembly, the Movement for the Liberation of the Ubangian People (MPLU), and the army, on November 5, 2020. A period of up to five years would be used to set up a new constitution and the conditions to hold nation-wide elections for the National Assembly and the presidency, and in the meantime a joint council of seven civilians and six military officials would lead the executive branch.

Military

Army soldiers in Bangui, the capital, during the 2020 military coup.

The Armed Forces of Ubangi-Shari (French: )

See also

This page uses material from the Wikipedia page Central African Republic, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).