Joseph Kabila

Joseph Kabila Kabange (, ; born 4 June 1971) is a Congolese politician who served as President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between January 2001 and January 2019.

He took office ten days after the assassination of his father, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila in the context of the Second Congo War.

Joseph Kabila Kabange and his twin sister Jaynet Kabila were born on 4 June 1971.

According to official accounts, the twins were born at Hewabora, a small village in the Fizi Territory of the South Kivu Province, in eastern DRC.

Rumors have abounded that Kabila was actually born in Tanzania, which would make him a citizen of that country.

He is the son of long time rebel, former AFDL leader and president of the DRC Laurent-Désiré Kabila and Sifa Mahanya.

Kabila's childhood coincided with the low point of his father's political and military career.

He was raised in relative remoteness, with few records of his early days.

Kabila attended a primary school organized by his father's rebel forces, before moving to Tanzania where he completed primary and secondary school.

Due to his father's status as an enemy of Zairean strongman Mobutu Sese Seko, Kabila posed as a Tanzanian in his school years to avoid detection by Zairean intelligence agents.

Following high school, Kabila followed a military curriculum in Tanzania, then at Makerere University in Uganda.

In October 1996, Laurent-Désiré Kabila launched the campaign in Zaire to oust the Mobutu regime with his newly formed army, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL).

Joseph Kabila became the commander of an AFDL unit that included "kadogos" (child soldiers) and likely played a key role in major battles on the road to Kinshasa, but his exact whereabouts during the war have been difficult to establish.

Joseph Kabila appears to have been present at the liberation of Kisangani where media reports identified him as commander of the rebel force that took the city after four days of intense fighting.

Following the AFDL's victory, and Laurent-Désiré Kabila's rise to the presidency, Joseph Kabila went on to get further training at the PLA National Defense University, in Beijing, China.

When he returned from China, Kabila was awarded the rank of major-general, and appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1998.

As chief of staff, he was one of the main military leaders in charge of government troops during the time of the Second Congo War (1998–2003).

He was later, in 2000, appointed Chief of Staff of the Land Forces, a position he held until the elder President Kabila's assassination in January 2001.

Kabila rose to the presidency on 26 January 2001 after the assassination of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, becoming the world's first head of government born in the 1970s.

Aged 29, he was considered young and inexperienced.

He subsequently attempted to end the ongoing civil war by negotiating peace agreements with rebel groups backed by Rwanda and Uganda, the same regional armies who had brought Laurent-Désiré Kabila's rebel group to power three years before.

The 2002 peace agreement signed at the Inter-Congolese Dialogue in Sun City, South Africa, which nominally ended the Second Congo War, maintained Joseph Kabila as President and head of state of the Congo.

An interim administration was set up under him, including the leaders of the country's two main rebel groups as vice-presidents (two other vice-presidents were representatives of the civilian opposition and government supporters respectively).

He was allowed to remain in power after the 2003 Pretoria Accord ended the war as the president of the country's new transitional government.

On 28 March 2004, an apparent coup attempt or mutiny around the capital Kinshasa, allegedly by members of the former guard of former president Mobutu Sese Seko (who had been ousted by Kabila's father in 1997 and died in the same year), failed.

On 11 June 2004, coup plotters led by Major Eric Lenge allegedly attempted to take power and announced on state radio that the transitional government was suspended, but were defeated by loyalist troops.

He was elected as president in 2006 and re-elected in 2011 for a second term.

In December 2005, a partial referendum approved a new constitution, and a presidential election was held on 30 July 2006, having been delayed from an earlier date in June.

The new constitution lowered the minimum age of presidential candidates from 35 to 30; Kabila turned 35 shortly before the election.

In March 2006, he registered as a candidate.

Although Kabila registered as an independent, he is the "initiator" of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), which chose him as their candidate in the election.

Although the new constitution stipulates that a debate be held between the two remaining candidates for the presidency, no debates took place and many declared this unconstitutional.

Kabila's term 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 on 29 September 2016, the nation's electoral authority announced that the election would not be held until early 2018.

Talk focused on the need for a census before holding elections.

Since stepping down after the 2018 election, Kabila, as a former president, serves as a senator for life.

In August 2018, Kabila announced that he would step down and not seek reelection in the December 2018 general election.

He was succeeded by Félix Tshisekedi in the country's first peaceful transition of power since independence.

Independent observers felt Tshisikedi had lost heavily to another candidate, Martin Fayulu, and that Kabila had fixed the official result for the candidate most likely to be most helpful to him in the latter's post-presidency period.

While in power, Joseph Kabila faced continuous wars in eastern Congo and internal rebel forces supported by the neighboring governments of Uganda and Rwanda.