Heart of Kasai — Kuba Kingdom art, diamond country, and the DRC's most overlooked cultural heartland
Kananga (known as Luluabourg under Belgian rule) is the capital of Kasai-Central province in the geographic heart of the DRC — a savannah and forest city on the Lulua River. The surrounding Kasai region is the heartland of the Luba and Kuba cultural spheres — two of sub-Saharan Africa's most artistically sophisticated pre-colonial civilisations, whose carved masks, thrones, cups, and textiles are displayed in major ethnographic museums worldwide (Quai Branly, Royal Museum for Central Africa). The region also produces a significant share of the world's industrial diamonds.
Kananga was founded in 1884 by German explorer Hermann Wissmann as a camp on the Lulua River and developed as a Belgian colonial administrative post. The city became a flashpoint at independence — the 1959-60 Lulua-Baluba ethnic conflict was one of the first crises of the independence period, displacing hundreds of thousands. After Mobutu's authenticity campaign it was renamed Kananga in 1966. The Kasai region's Tshisekedi family has produced two DRC presidents, including current president Félix Tshisekedi, giving Kananga outsized political significance in contemporary Congolese politics.