Bangui—“The African City”

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Assignment, Week 8

Continue to rectify the African city plans assigned to you (3–4 cities). Provide screenshots of these rectified maps on your blog.

How is the “informal” conveyed within your city? Illustrate key informal/formal differences in spatial use through evidence provided in local newspaper, blog, or website insights. Map some aspect of this “informal”/”formal” dynamic with AfricaMap and/or Google Earth. Provide screenshots.

Excuse the slight departure from the assignment here: as I have mentioned before, Bangui’s Internet presence is next to nonexistent. What’s more, the news websites that do exist, for whatever reason, largely limit their coverage to the city’s formal sector. Their economic sections cover deals between the Central African government and foreign beneficiaries, or European countries that have won contracts to extract the country’s resources, but not the informal sector which has so much greater an effect on people’s everyday lives. There is one blog, La Lettre de C.B.M., which seems to give sharp and cynical social commentary. Naturally, of course, it’s not online right now.

In any case, Bangui’s informal economy has been studied in other contexts, so I will draw the contents of this post largely from scholarly sources.

A dichotomy between the formal and informal sectors of the economy exists in most, if not all, African cities. In Bangui, however, their relative sizes are more pronounced. It all goes back to colonial neglect: As France essentially did not care to develop Bangui beyond the tiny enclave that was the European city, at the time of independence there was barely any formal economy. As a result, in 2012, there is still barely any formal economy.

Bangui’s formal economy is, in simple numerical terms, woefully incapable of supporting large numbers of employees. Jobs in government ministries, international organizations and legitimate private-sector companies are exclusively limited to those with university education, but even among that subset of the population there is fierce competition. Additionally, in spatial terms, formal jobs are geographically inaccessible to the vast majority of the population. (More on that later.)

What of the rest? The remainder of Bangui’s population, though not officially employed, forms the lifeblood of its economy. They are street vendors, taxi drivers and repairpeople. They provide essential services for which the formal sector is unequipped, the services that are necessary for survival (Woodfork 147–148).

I did find one relevant article (after all that, one!). It was in the Journal de Bangui of 9 March 2012, and it reports on women selling salted fish in the streets. One is quoted as referring to fish-vending as a better way for women to support themselves than “whining” at their husbands (Journal de Bangui). This informal action is a good example of women collectively filling a void in the formal economy (affordable food) and at the same time advancing themselves.

Spatially, the dichotomy between formal and informal economy resembles the dichotomy between the planned and unplanned areas of the city. The relatively small former European city is the only place where one will find a formal economy, and yet it too is home to many informal economic activities. (The fish-sellers in the above article were stationed in front of Bangui’s main cathedral.) Outside of the city center, once the squatter settlements begin, there is only informal—and yet, this is really the economic heart of the city. Whereas the Marché Centrale specializes in luxury goods and imports, most Banguissoises do their shopping in the markets of Kilomètre 5 (informally K-Cinq, pronounced [ka sãk˺]) and other outlying areas of the city, where they can find affordable produce, clothing and other necessities (Villien et al. 140–141).

Informality is hard to map. I attempted, here, to find and highlight all the agglomerations of structures that looked like marketplaces in one area of Bangui, to give an idea of the prominence of informal markets in otherwise residential areas. (The big one on the top is Kilomètre 5.) See the interactive map here.

Rectification

Ah, yes. This might be my last map. It is of the Brazzaville region, back when the city across the river was called Léopoldville (and not Kinshasa). The other three I have been assigned are of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, but they may not actually be available to rectify. See the Brazzaville map below.

I rectified this using the latitude and longitude reference points in the corners of the map. They weren’t precisely accurate, but they were close enough that I decided to let it go. See the interactive map here.

References

Reseau des Journalistes R.C.A. “Bangui: Des Femmes Centrafricaines à La Recherche De Leur Autonomie.” Journal de Bangui, sec. Economie & Business: Web. 9 March 2012.

Villien, François, et al. Bangui, Capitale d’un Pays Enclavé d’Afrique Centrale : Étude Historique et Géographique. 4 Vol. Talence: Centre de Recherches sur les Espaces Tropicaux, Institut de Géographie, Université de Bordeaux III, 1990. Print.

Woodfork, Jacqueline. Culture and Customs of the Central African Republic. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Assignment, Week 7

How do factors of migration, movement and transportation affect your city?

Using Google Earth, mark the nearest airport, rail and bus/taxi hubs, market (commercial center) and political center of your city. Measure the distance from the airport, rail station and bus/taxi hubs to the commercial center using Google Earth. Provide a screenshot of Google Earth with each of these points marked.

Continue to rectify the African city plans assigned to you (2–3 cities). Provide screenshots of these rectified maps on your blog.

Migration is a big issue in Bangui, mainly because it just keeps growing. This has been the case since the early 20th century, as discussed in earlier posts, but the reasons have changed. During the colonial era, it was the prospect of finding work that brought tens of thousands of workers from the countryside to Bangui’s cramped peripheries (Villien et al. 43–44). Today, to some extent, that factor still exists, but an additional draw is the fact that Bangui is the only part of the country over which the national government has any semblance of control. Everywhere else is perennially unstable, rendering the capital—whether by mythicized view or objective comparison—a desirable alternative.

Movement is difficult, as are many other things in Bangui. The city has a public transit system which consists of green buses and yellow taxis, all of which are known for being dangerously overcrowded due to deficiencies in fleet size and poor maintenance (State Department 2012). The city’s main bus station is the Gare Routière, 2.14 miles (3.44 kilometers) from the Central Market. Buses leave from here to go to other cities and towns like Bouar and Ndélé (Gheos).

Subway? Light rail? Freight trains? Don’t be silly. The nearest rail station is 355 miles (571 kilometers) away in Bondo, D.R. Congo (U.N.). Most raw materials are transported to Bangui by truck, then put on boats and transferred downriver to Brazzaville, then brought to Pointe-Noire by rail before going on to Europe, Asia or North America for refinement (C.I.A.). River transport is probably among the better-developed domains of regular movement in Bangui, as it provides large-scale transport of raw materials and ferries across the Ubangi in the absence of a bridge.

Bangui has the country’s only international airport, Bangui–M’Poko, which has one of the country’s two paved runways. BGF (its I.A.T.A. code) is a recent construction—it is not shown on a regional map from 1963, though information about its exact date of construction is not easily available. The 1963 map shows a military airport occupying the area around what is now the National Assembly a few miles outside of the city center. This appears to have been completely demolished and replaced by the new one, which is 5.11 miles (8.22 kilometers) northwest of the city center and has a longer runway (Zarhy 25).

The pushpins are, starting at the top, Bangui-M’Poko International Airport; the Gare Routière (bus terminal); the Palais Presidentiel (political center, surrounded by other government buildings); and the Marche Central (commercial center). To find a train station, follow these directions: From the city center, walk to the river and take a ferry across. Drive 93 kilometers southeast on the gravel-paved N23, make a sharp left and follow the N6 for 832 kilometers, then turn right onto the N4 for another 123 kilometers until you reach Bondo. Alternatively, charter an airplane.

Maps

I have continued with my rectification. I rectified two more maps of Libreville, shown below. These were really hard, because there weren’t too many solid reference points I could use. Both, from 1964, showed very little development and lots of dense forest. Currently, one of the two areas has been completely incorporated into metropolitan Libreville—and the other is still dense forest. I’m not sure which was harder to rectify. I ended up having to use coastlines (which looked like they had changed a bit) as references for both, but they came out O.K.

References

“Bangui.” Gheos World Travel Guide. 25 March 2012.Web. 25 March 2012 <http://gheos.com/atlas/index/place.php?Bangui>.

“Central African Republic.” The C.I.A. World Factbook. 21 March 2012.Web. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ct.html>.

“Central African Republic: Country Specific Information.” Travel.State.Gov. 2 March 2012.Web. 25 March 2012 <http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1085.html.

Democratic Republic of the Congo. New York: United Nations, 2011.

Zarhy, M. Les Centres Urbains et Régionaux de la République Centrafricaine. Jerusalem: Institut de Planification et de Développement S.A., 1963. Print.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Assignment, Week 6

Continue to rectify the African city plans assigned to you (2–3 cities). Provide screenshots of these rectified maps on your blog.
Select two of the additional cities you have rectified and compare them with your city from the vantage of spatial differences. Illustrate your findings with screen shots and other images.

The map-rectifying is going well. Predictably, my plans for high break-time productivity largely collapsed, but I did find myself with some free time last night to work on maps. I have now completed five out of my twelve: four of Douala, Cameroon, and one of Yaoundé, Cameroon. Screenshots below:

The southwest corner of Douala, closest to the harbor, was presumably the colonial “European” sector; it now has the majority of the city’s infrastructure, including government ministries, hospitals and embassies. See the interactive map here.

Moving east, there are still well-planned blocks, but few place-markers other than “École,” suggesting a colonial-era, now upper-class, residential area. Rectifying this map was made more difficult—and more useful—by the presence of no fewer than seven clouds obscuring the satellite image. See the interactive map here.

To the north of the previous map is also a large residential area, but a different color—literally. I don’t have a legend, but it seems as though the mapmakers drew any colonial or European-style buildings in red and everything else in gray, which is consistent with the color of the planned neighborhoods in the other maps and the much more chaotic ones here. Note that a marketplace, a couple of missions, a police station and a railway stockyard on this map are also red. See the interactive map here.

This northern part of the city looks like a commercial area, judging from the mixture of red and gray buildings. There are also large areas of undeveloped land, maybe parks or golf courses. See the interactive map here.

This is a map of central Cameroon, including the city of Yaoundé (center-left). It was a breeze to rectify, since it had latitude and longitude markers; they were not precisely accurate, but enough so that I didn’t think it worth it to refine any more. Yaoundé, from what I can see, has undergone unchecked sprawl in a large part dictated by the topography of the region (hills and plateaus and such); in this way it reminds me of Kigali. (See the white billowiness behind the map there? Well, it must have been overcast in Yaoundé that day.) See the interactive map here.

Douala is known for its sprawling, underdeveloped slums; most of them are not shown in the four maps I rectified, and there are probably a lot more of them now than there were when those maps were drawn in 1963. In this way, it shows a similar contrast between the decaying neatness and spaciousness of the former European city and the expanses of ramshackle slums to what is seen in Bangui. It is not quite on the same magnitude, though: Douala’s worst squatter-like slums are far away from the city center, and the remnants of its European city are fairly large; in Bangui, the European city was very small, and the completely unplanned settlements start just outside the city center. This is probably related to Douala’s longtime importance as a port city, as opposed to Bangui’s obscurity due to its remoteness. Additionally, Douala is simply larger: its population is well over 2 million, whereas Bangui’s is ambiguously at about 700,000. Interestingly, similar proportions of their respective countries live in them: 10.7% of Cameroonians live in Douala, and 12% of Central Africans live in Bangui (source).

Another unusual parallel between Douala and Bangui relates to their shared location on rivers—Douala at the mouth of the Wouri River, and Bangui a good distance up the Ubangi. One of the first things I notice about the first map of Douala I rectified is that the coastline that existed in 1963 is vastly different from the one shown by the recent satellite image. This could either be the result of landfilling or sedimentation, and possibly a mixture of the two, but there is simply a lot more land—and developed land!—in Douala now than there was 40 years ago.

The 1963 roadmap overlaid onto very recent Google satellite imagery: notice that, though the streets match up perfectly, the coastlines are completely different. See the interactive map here.

This happens in Bangui too—though on a smaller scale, and I’m fairly certain that it is all sedimentation (curve in the river and all that) and no landfilling. I mainly just notice that the same islands in the Ubangi river are shown as different sizes on every new map I try to rectify. The map-warper hates me for it.

It’s hard to compare Yaoundé with Bangui with so little detail on the map I rectified. The main thing that I notice is that Yaoundé’s expansion, as I noted in the above caption, seems to be much more determined by topographical variation than Bangui’s; it is true that Bangui’s sprawl is limited by the river to the south and a hill to the east, but other than that it has essentially radiated out evenly in all directions. Yaoundé, on the other hand, is not built on a body of water and has expanded in all directions—but to varying extents, apparently contingent upon the prevalence of hills and plateaus.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Assignment, Week 5

Upload and rectify an early plan of your city. Analyze core differences between this early plan and the current city plan. Mark these differences and provide related screenshots. What, if anything do these changes convey about difference and identity in your city?

Select one article from an early newspaper addressing your city and discuss its main themes. Source: Historical Newspaper Project.

Begin to rectify the African city plans assigned to you (2–3 cities). Provide screenshots of these rectified maps on your blog.

Discuss briefly the subject(s) you would like to address in your final paper on your city.

A plan of Bangui from 1930 looks much like a plan of central Bangui today (Villien 41). To some extent, this is to be expected, as streets are generally stationary. What is unexpected is that, looking at Bangui then and now, it becomes clear that very little urban planning has taken place since that map was drawn.

Bangui’s city center has hardly changed at all since 1930. Images: Villien 41, Google Maps

In 1930, Bangui consisted of a European city with spacious boulevards and soundly constructed buildings, and several African “feeder” villages which sprang up around it to provide workers for European households and enterprises—or simply because people thought they had more of a chance in the city than in the country.

The feeders grew and grew over time. Soon, they dwarfed the planned city and butted right up against it. The French response was minimal: a map from 1963 shows a few more thoroughfares extending out into the urban sprawl, but no planning within the villages, which quickly became squatter settlements (Zarhy 25). Since 1963, aside from the construction of a civilian airport, there appears to have been no planned development in Bangui whatsoever. Meanwhile, the sprawl has continued unchecked, spilling over into the neighboring province as what paved roads existed fall into disrepair, building up to a planner’s perfect storm.

The white spaces to the north and west of the city center on this 1963 map were and are filled by unplanned squatter settlements.

Consistent with the de facto French policy of ignoring Equatorial Africa to the extent possible, Bangui received minimal coverage in newspapers before independence, except when mentioned as a stopover for daring explorers or as the end of multiple promised French railways that never materialized. Two events, however, did receive some amount of coverage.

The first was a widely reproduced letter from French explorer Pierre Sauvorgnan de Brazza, who had been appointed to assess conditions in various parts of French Equatorial Africa in 1905, in response to criticisms of rubber-harvesting in the Congo Free State. He visited Bangui and the region, and “found the conditions … intolerable,” though “[e]verything was done to hide the true state of affairs” (The Colorado Springs Gazette).

The accusations against the French administration—that local populations were forced to gather rubber at gunpoint, frequently flogged to death and imprisoned until they starved—were similar to those leveled against King Léopold in the Congo, and similarly true. One particularly distressing study has found a direct correlation between rubber production and bullets used on harvesters in one part of the Equatorial Africa. Luckily for the French, de Brazza died on his way back to France, and his complaints were forgotten (Hochschild 280–281).

So-called “red rubber,” however, did go out of style after its devastating effects in the Congo Free State were documented. It was reinstituted, however, when World War II necessitated a surge in production of raw materials. Mandatory gathering resumed, much to the chagrin of the victimized populations (Villien 42). An article in The New York Times from 1942 reports that “ ‘the 1942 rubber output is three times as large as last year’s,’ ” and connects this to the leadership of Charles de Gaulle without so much as mentioning that the rubber harvesters had no choice in the matter (The New York Times).

French Equatorial Africa as a whole spent its entire existence being ignored, and even after independence its component states have only managed to make headlines because of famines, civil wars or especially repressive dictators. For my final paper, I plan to address that neglect and its consequences. In particular, the most troublesome legacy of the colonial era in Bangui is the dichotomy between the planned city and the proliferation of unplanned slums. Good urban planning could have softened the impact of this “rural exodus,” as the French called it, but nothing of the sort materialized. In my paper, I will tentatively address the successes and failures of any French responses to this problem, and how urban sprawl continues to threaten Bangui today.

Maps I’ve Rectified

In addition to this blog, I have been assigned some maps to upload and warp over satellite imagery. We then put them on a cool web app called WorldMap, where they will be aggregated with other maps. I have been maintaining a section with maps of Bangui, which I don’t think I have mentioned here yet. I encourage you to have a look; the U.R.L. is http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/oubangui.

The maps which I have been assigned are as follows: four of Douala (Cameroon), one of Yaoundé (Cameroon), three of Libreville (Gabon), one of Brazzaville (Rep. of Congo) and three of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). These are to be rectified and uploaded throughout the semester. So far I have done two of Douala, screenshots of which appear below. With the first one, I am very satisfied, but weird stuff started happening with the second.

I’ll have to redo that second one later. To see these maps in all their interactive glory, go to http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/oubangui and scroll over to Douala, Cameroon.

References

“Economic Gains Sharp in Africa: Sees Free French Gain.” The New York Times, sec. News: 12. Print. 10 May 1942.

Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print.

“Mission to French Congo Finds Bad State of Affairs.” Colorado Springs Gazette: 2. Print. 27 Sep 1905.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Assignment, Week 4

How is your city depicted on the web? Provide the U.R.L.’s of five sites that offer different views of your city’s popular life.

Discuss one building of popular or political importance in your city. Describe its setting. Provide a photograph of this building (with label).

Create a polygon and point to identify the site of this structure and the area in which it is located. Provide a screenshot indicating the location of your building in Google Earth.

See, this is where making a blog about Bangui gets (more) difficult. The problem with describing how Bangui is depicted on the Internet is that, by and large, it isn’t. The Central African Republic’s 123,800 Internet users make up only about 2.5% of the country’s population (Internet World Stats). Thus, it should come as no surprise that to find websites related to popular life in Bangui is exceedingly frustrating. Here’s what I found:

Journal de Bangui: A Central African newspaper, Le Journal de Bangui has something resembling the “standard” array of sections expected in a periodical—Société, Musique, Arts, etc.—as well as news. The society- and culture-related sections are useful for getting a peak into popular life: articles about the National Central African Theater Troupe and a book about urban development by a Central African expatriate remind the reader that such things exist even in a city as decrepit and poor as Bangui, though they also make one wonder how accessible they are to the general public.
“La Lettre de C.B.M.”: “La Lettre de C.B.M.” provides political and social commentary about happenings in Bangui and the Central African Republic. It is not a newspaper, and so has no obligation to be unbiased; the result is that the perspective is often quite jaded, ending posts with phrases like, « Oh Centrafrique, jusqu’à quand ? » (“Oh, Central Africa, how long?”)
“Letters to Bangui”: A Swedish doctoral student spent nine weeks in the Central African Republic researching security sector reform, and maintained a blog about her experiences. They give some insight into the positive and negative aspects of life in Bangui.
“Bangui, Capital of Misery”: Disregard this journal’s affiliation with an anarchist group, and it provides a telling, almost comical, account of poverty and bureaucratic corruption in the C.A.R., as experienced by a group of Irish tourists.
Le Confidant: I didn’t want to use another newspaper, but you underestimate the utter lack of online material about Bangui. This site, notable for its wretched design, also has several sections about popular life that appear to be updated about once a week. What is interesting to note is that there appears to be little overlap between the coverage of Le Confidant and Le Journal de Bangui.

Sô Zowa Laâ and BanguiWeb are good aggregations of links, images and information. The former is made for the Central African diaspora, and the latter is something like a travel guide, on the off-chance that someone wants to go on a relaxing vacation to Bangui (not recommended, by the way).

In the architecture of Bangui’s Palais d’Assemblée Nationale, one can see the grandeur envisioned by its French architects; in the overgrown lawn, the collapse of public services in the city is also readily apparent. Image: http://img4.hostingpics.net

There are several interesting buildings in Bangui—though, admittedly, fewer than in a lot of other cities. Here, let’s talk about the National Assembly building. Built between 1953 and 1960 by French architects Cazaban, Legrand, Janin and Sarkovitch, it was completed just in time for independence to house the 140 deputies of the Central African Republic’s unicameral legislature. It was designed in angular, modernist style with efficient ventilation in mind, and the architects deliberately used a variety of local materials in its construction (Christin and Filliat 268).

The Palais d’Assemblée Nationale is not in the city center; this area was filled to capacity by the French long before they even considered giving Ubangi-Shari any measure of self-governance. It is on the outskirts of what was the “European city” of the colonial era, on a thin strip of planned city north of the central roundabout between the densely packed ethnic quarters of Mandaba, Fou, Outala, Banga and Miskine (Villien 54).

The National Assembly building’s location in Bangui, with the surrounding neighborhoods labeled.

References

“Africa Internet Facebook Usage and Population Statistics.” Internet World Stats. 10 Feb 2012. Web. 26 Feb 2012 <http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm#cf>.

Christin, Olivier, and Armelle Filliat. “Destin Des Villes De Pouvoir.” Architectures Françaises Outre-Mer. Ed. Pierre Mardaga. Liège: Institut Français d’Architecture, 1992. 259–271. Print.

Villien, François, et al. Bangui, Capitale d’un Pays Enclavé d'Afrique Centrale : Étude Historique Et Géographique. 4 Vol. Talence: Centre de Recherches sur les Espaces Tropicaux, Institut de Géographie, Université de Bordeaux III, 1990. Print. Pays Enclavés.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Assignment, Week 3 (Part II)

Provide a short bibliography (minimum ten entries) of key academic or primary sources on your city.

I forgot to post this before—sorry! Anyway, here it is.

Amaye, Maurice. L’Identité des Populations Précoloniales de Bangui : Mythes et Réalités : Précisions Nouvelles d’Après les Sources Missionnaires. Bangui: 1991. Print.

Boulvert, Yves. Bangui, 1889–1989 : Points De Vue Et Témoignages. Paris: Ministère de la coopération et du développement, 1993. Print.

Bruel, Georges. L’Afrique Équatoriale Française : Le Pays — Les Habitants — La Colonisation — Les Pouvoirs Publics. Paris: É. Larose, 1918. Print.

Fedangaï, Jean. “Origines Diplomatiques et Politiques de la Création de Bangui.” WaMbesso 1.1 (1989): 6–28. Print.

Kalck, Pierre. Historical Dictionary of the Central African Republic. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2005. Print.

Pounouwaka, Martin. Les Explorateurs en Oubangui-Chari, 1884–1914. Bangui: Sanza Edition, 1996. Print.

“Les Rapides Du Haut-Oubangui.” Bulletin Société Royale Belge du Geographie 18 (1894): 494–501. Print.

Woodfork, Jacqueline. Culture and Customs of the Central African Republic. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.

Zarhy, M. Les Centres Urbains et Régionaux de la République Centrafricaine. Jerusalem: Institut de Planification et de Développement S.A., 1963. Print.

Assignment, Week 3

Write a short history of your city. Include screenshots of your main points highlighted with polygons, points, and lines. When was it founded, by whom, and under what circumstances? What does the name of your city mean? What is the broader significance of this history and name? What questions does this name raise? What if any earlier names were there?

The area around Bangui was historically inhabited by the Bobangi, a merchant people who lived along the Ubangi River. They participated, if indirectly, in the Atlantic trade, which brought them European products in exchange for commodities like ebony, ivory and slaves (Amaye 4).

Europeans, meanwhile, were just beginning to explore Central Africa. France and Belgium’s King Léopold II both had colonial ambitions in the Congo, and a rivalry arose around the competing expeditions of the French Pierre Sauvorgnan de Brazza and the Belgian-funded Henry Morton Stanley in the 1870s.¹ The Congress of Berlin made the Congo River the official border between the French Congo and Léopold’s Congo Free State in 1885, and a contemporaneous Franco-Belgian treaty made the Ubangi River (as yet largely unexplored) the northern boundary (Pounouwaka 2–3).

In the following years, a succession of expeditions explored and charted the Ubangi River. A Belgian post was founded at Zongo in 1885 on the east bank near the rapids of modern Bangui (Pounouwaka 9). To make up for lost time,² in July 1889, a French post was built at the rapids and christened Bangui, from the French interpretation of the local word for “rapids” (Fedangaï 13).³ It had rough beginnings due to local hostility, flooding, and shortages of personnel and medicine. In four years, the command of the post changed hands nine times and the installation itself had to be moved twice (Villien et al. 22).⁴

Sites of the three successive posts set up by the French. The settlement across the river is Zongo.

In 1903, when Bangui was made the capital of the newly formed colony of Ubangi-Shari, it began to expand into a city, instead of two conjoined clearings in the forest (Villien et al. 26). By 1912, it had administrative buildings, a hospital and a hotel, and over 1,000 residents. The European population of Bangui grew steadily, quadrupling between 1911 and 1934; the African population, however, grew from 2,000 to 20,000 in the same period (Fedangaï 26). As the European city expanded, African towns sprouted on its periphery (Villien et al. 40). In the 1920s, roads were built and automobiles introduced, easing communications with the interior (Fedangaï 27).

Bangui, as it existed in 1930; as the city expanded, indigenous villages sprang up on its outskirts, all of which were later engulfed by urban sprawl. (Villien, et al. 40, overlaid onto Google satellite imagery)

After World War II,⁵ all travel restrictions were lifted, prompting a huge influx of Africans to Bangui; by 1956, the city had a population of 72,000, of whom only about 1,000 were European. This “rural exodus” slowed by the late 1950s, as the region’s unpredictable political climate discouraged investment (Villien et al. 43–44).

It was around this time that thoughts of independence first became prominent. France gave citizenship to residents of its colonies, and allowed for representatives from the colonies to sit in the National Assembly. The first of these, Barthélemy Boganda, charismatically called for full independence with “voluntary interdependence.” In 1958, Ubangi-Shari gained autonomy with Boganda as its executive (Villien et al. 44–45). The next year, however, on the eve of full independence, he died in a plane crash.⁶ David Dacko succeeded him as the first president of the independent Central African Republic. Dacko’s authoritarian rule ended in 1965 with a coup by Jean-Bédél Bokassa. Bokassa brutally ruled for 14 years, at one point crowning himself emperor of the new “Central African Empire” before being ousted in 1979.⁷ Dacko was reinstated, then promptly ousted by André Kolingba. An election in 1993 brought Ange-Felix Patassé to power, for the longest period of civilian rule in the C.A.R.’s history before he, too, was ousted in 2003 by the current president, François Bozizé (Woodfork 15–17).

This instability, unsurprisingly, has led to an exceedingly poor investment climate, difficulty governing and inability to provide basic services. The population of Bangui has ballooned to over 600,000, in part because it is the only part of the country which the government can reliably control (Brinkhoff). Public services have collapsed, buildings and roads are maintained little if at all, and there are continual strikes and riots over lack of pay by civil servants. In addition, flooding in 2005 left 20,000 people homeless and outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever have claimed many lives in recent years (Woodfork xxi). Bangui, at the moment, is calm, but remains constantly on the edge.

Areas of Bangui that are prone to flooding (Villien, et al. 61, overlaid onto Google satellite imagery)

Footnotes

¹	At around this time, campaigns by the Bobangui threatened to displace the Bateke, their neighbors to the south. Makoko, the king of the Bateke, was concerned enough that when de Brazza wandered in and offered to make the kingdom a French protectorate in 1880, he eagerly accepted (Amaye 4). A French outpost was established on the west bank of the Congo River which would become Brazzaville; a Belgian city, Léopoldville (now Kinshasa), was promptly built directly across the river. Thus, the French gradually dominated the land west of the River, and Belgians the east.
²	The first French mission to be sent up the Ubangi was led by Albert Dolisie in 1887. At Mossaka, a major Bobangui city in modern Congo-Brazzaville, the fleet was routed and forced to retreat. Shortly after, a military expedition was sent to burn Mossaka and install a French garrison there. Through all this, despite their willingness to trade, the Bobangui were determined not to be displaced by Europeans, and mission after mission was met with hostility (Amaye 5).
³	There were two existing towns in the area of the rapids called “Bangui,” now distinguished as “Bangui I” and “Bangui II” (Amaye 4).
⁴	In one of the more dramatic incidents, post overseer M. Maurice Musy was ambushed, killed and eaten while trying to intervene in a local conflict (Amaye 6). Conditions were so poor that the authorities in Brazzaville considered abandoning Bangui entirely, though in the end its strategic position was deemed valuable enough to be maintained (Fedangaï 17–18).
⁵	Ubangi-Shari sided with the Free French during the war, thereby separating itself completely from France and forcing it to become self-sufficient—which, to the chagrin of those involved, meant the institution of mandatory collection of rubber and cotton so infamously destructive in the Congo Free State (Villien et al. 42).
⁶	Boganda was a larger-than-life figure to the citizens of Ubangi-Shari, to the point that he was nearly deified. On the day of his death, crowds gathered at the shores of the Ubangi River waiting to see him walk on water (Le Vine 238).
⁷	The French government supported Bokassa in coming to power, and continued to support his regime; this included paying for most of his coronation ceremony, whose total cost of $20 million was equivalent to the country’s entire annual G.D.P. It took a massacre of dozens of schoolchildren in which Bokassa personally took part before France withdrew its support, eventually sending troops to help with his ouster (Woodfork 15–16).

References

Amaye, Maurice. L’Identité des Populations Précoloniales de Bangui : Mythes et Réalités : Précisions Nouvelles d’Après les Sources Missionnaires. Bangui: 1991. Print.

Brinkhoff, Thomas. “Central African Republic: Prefectures and Cities.” CityPopulation. 15 May 2009. Web. <http://www.citypopulation.de/Centralafrica.html>.

Fedangaï, Jean. “Origines Diplomatiques et Politiques de la Création de Bangui.” WaMbesso 1.1 (1989): 6–28. Print.

Le Vine, Victor T. ”Experiments in Power, 1958–2003.“ Politics in Francophone Africa. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004. 201-240. Print.

Pounouwaka, Martin. Les Explorateurs en Oubangui-Chari, 1884–1914. Bangui: Sanza Edition, 1996. Print.

Woodfork, Jacqueline. Culture and Customs of the Central African Republic. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.