Monument to Laurent-Désiré Kabila

A monument to the DRC's former president, built by North Korean sculptors and notable for its unusual provenance

The monument to Laurent-Désiré Kabila stands in Gombe as a tribute to the man who overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko and ruled the DRC from 1997 until his assassination in 2001. What makes it particularly notable is its origin: the monument was constructed by North Korean sculptors from the Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang, the same studio that has produced monumental statues for governments across Africa. The stylistic influence of socialist realism is visible in the pose and execution.

North Korea's Mansudae studio has quietly become one of the world's most prolific producers of large-scale public monuments in Africa, working in countries whose governments appreciate both the price and the political alignment. The Kabila monument is a small example of this unusual trade, and seeing it in person raises questions about the strange currents that connect Kinshasa to Pyongyang. It is not a major tourist attraction, but it is an intriguing footnote for anyone paying attention to the city's history and its international relationships.

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Laurent-Désiré Kabila led the rebel movement that overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, ending three decades of dictatorship, and ruled the renamed Democratic Republic of Congo until his assassination by a bodyguard in January 2001. North Korea has a long history of exporting monumental sculpture to African governments -- the Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang has built statues and monuments across the continent, from Namibia to Zimbabwe to Senegal, a largely unreported arms-length diplomacy conducted in bronze and stone.