Joseph Kabila
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Joseph Kabila Kabange ( kab-EE-lə, French: [ʒozɛf kabila]; born 4 June 1971) is a Congolese politician and former military officer who was the fourth President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2001 to 2019. He took office ten days after the assassination of his father, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, in the context of the Second Congo War. He was allowed to remain in power as the president of the new transitional government after the 2002 peace agreements ended the war. Kabila founded the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD) and was elected president in 2006. He was re-elected for a second term in 2011. Since stepping down after the 2018 election, Kabila, as a former president, is a senator for life. Kabila was the country's second-longest serving president. Kabila was born in Hewa Bora II, a village in the present-day South Kivu Province of the eastern DRC. His father, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, lived in isolation while leading a dissident movement against the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The younger Kabila later received education and military training in Tanzania and Uganda. He studied at Makerere University before the First Congo War broke out in 1996. His father was a founding member of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) with Rwandan backing to overthrow Mobutu. Joseph Kabila participated in the war, which ended with his father becoming the president, and afterwards was sent to the PLA National Defense University in China. He was appointed as the deputy chief of staff of the Congolese Armed Forces, and after returning from China, was briefly the chief of staff in 1998, at the outbreak of the Second Congo War. In 2000, he became the chief of staff of the Land Forces. After his father's assassination, Kabila succeeded him as the president, and restarted the peace process that had previously stalled. He is credited with ending the Second Congo War and restoring relative stability to most of the country, though conflict later restarted in the east against rebel forces supported by neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. As the head of the transitional government, he helped organize electoral institutions and in 2006 presided over the DRC's first free multi-party election in decades. After that Kabila led an increasingly authoritarian government, and his re-election in 2011 was marred with accusations of fraud. During his tenure, he encouraged foreign investment in the mining industry and improved the infrastructure. The size of the country's economy increased by five times. However, the growth was highly unequal, and the majority of DR Congo's population still lived below the international poverty line by the time he left office. Kabila's government became known for cronyism, corruption, and human rights violations, including security forces killing protestors. The DRC consistently scored low in the Corruption Perceptions Index and The Economist Democracy Index. The United States and the European Union sanctioned associates of Kabila in 2016 and 2017 for corruption and undermining democracy. The DRC experienced a political crisis during the last years of Kabila's second term. His constitutional mandate was due to expire on 20 December 2016, according to the terms of the constitution adopted in 2006. Officials suggested that elections would be held in November 2016, but in September, the electoral commission announced that the election would not be held before early 2018. Kabila's popularity declined and he also faced growing pressure from the international community to give up power. An agreement was reached after mediation by the influential Catholic hierarchy to appoint a new government and prepare to hold elections, but they were delayed again. In August 2018, Kabila announced that he would step down and not seek a third term in the upcoming election that December. In January 2019, Kabila was succeeded by Félix Tshisekedi in the country's first peaceful transition of power. Independent observers concluded that Tshisikedi lost heavily to another candidate, Martin Fayulu, and that Kabila had fixed the official result for the candidate most likely to be helpful to him. He remained influential in the DRC's politics after he left office. Kabila's political alliance, the Common Front for Congo, initially held the majority of seats in the parliament and provincial governorships. It formed a coalition government in August 2019 with Tshisekedi's Heading for Change alliance after months of negotiations. Tshisekedi ended the coalition in December 2020 over the blocking of his agenda. In early 2021 he removed the last of Kabila's allies from the government, and in December 2023 Kabila went into self-imposed exile abroad. Tshisekedi accused him of supporting the resurgent campaign of the Rwandan-backed March 23 Movement (M23) in early 2025, which he denied. A Congolese military court tried Kabila in absentia for treason and in September 2025 sentenced him to death.