Congo-Brazzaville Emoji & Symbols

The flag of the Republic of the Congo is cut diagonally by a yellow band running from the lower hoist corner to the upper fly corner, with a green triangle above it on the hoist side and a red triangle below it on the fly side. It was first adopted in 1959, the year before independence, replaced in 1970 by the red flag of the People's Republic, and restored in 1991. Green is commonly read as the forests and farming, yellow as the country's natural wealth and the friendship of its people, and red as the struggle for independence. The three are also the Pan-African colours, which is why 💚💛❤️ is a common Congo colour string in bios and comments.

The Congo-Brazzaville flag emoji 🇨🇬 is not a picture stored in Unicode. It is two regional indicator letters, 🇨 and 🇬, spelling CG, the country's ISO code; phones and apps that know the pair draw the flag. Full country flags arrived in emoji in 2015, so every current phone shows it. Windows' own emoji font draws no country flags, so on a Windows PC the same character often appears as the letters CG, while the person you send it to on a phone sees the flag.

"Why does Congo have two flags?" is one of the most searched Congo questions, and the answer is that there are two countries. 🇨🇬 (CG) is the Republic of the Congo, capital Brazzaville, on the north and west bank of the Congo River. 🇨🇩 (CD) is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, capital Kinshasa, the much larger country on the other bank, with a sky-blue flag, a red diagonal stripe and a yellow star. Searching "Congo" in an emoji keyboard usually offers both, so check the colours before you send: green, yellow and red is Brazzaville. The DRC has its own Congo-Kinshasa collection.

Congo national symbols in emoji

The coat of arms shows a red lion holding a torch on a gold shield crossed by a green wavy band for the river, held up by two elephants and topped with a crown, over the motto Unité, Travail, Progrès (Unity, Work, Progress). In emoji that is 🦁🔥🐘👑. The national anthem is La Congolaise.

The Congo River is the country's main street. Brazzaville and Kinshasa face each other across it, the two closest capital cities in the world apart from Rome and Vatican City, and ferries and dugout canoes ply between them 🌊⛴️🛶. Brazzaville itself is named after the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza; 🏙️ is its riverfront, 🏢 the Nabemba Tower, one of the city's landmarks, and ⛪ the Basilica of Sainte-Anne with its green tiled roof. On the Atlantic, Pointe-Noire is the port and oil city ⚓🚢🛢️, with the beaches of the Côte Sauvage 🏖️, and the Congo–Ocean Railway 🚂 links it to the capital.

Most of the north is rainforest 🌳🏞️, and the equator runs across it. Odzala-Kokoua and Nouabalé-Ndoki national parks are among the best places on earth to see western lowland gorillas and forest elephants 🦍🐘, along with monkeys, leopards and African grey parrots 🐒🐆🦜; the rivers have hippos and crocodiles 🦛🐊, and on the coast at Conkouati-Douli sea turtles nest and humpback whales pass offshore 🐢🐋. Oil and timber 🛢️🪵 are the two big words of the economy.

Congolese rumba and La Sape: 🎸 💃 🕴️

Congolese rumba belongs to both banks of the river: in 2021 UNESCO added it to its list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity on a joint bid by the two Congos. Its sound is interlocking electric guitars, horns, drums and close-harmony singing, and Brazzaville bands such as Les Bantous de la Capitale, founded in 1959, helped shape it. Send it as 🎸🎷🎶, with 💃🕺 for the dance floor and 🎤 🥁 🪘 for the singer and the drums.

La Sape, the Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes, is Brazzaville's famous culture of elegance: sapeurs in perfectly cut suits in bold colours, ties, hats and polished shoes, parading through neighbourhoods like Bacongo as a performance of style and dignity. The emoji kit is 🕴️👔🎩🧥👞🕶️, and "sapeur" or "#lasape" with 🕴️ is how fans tag it.

Congolese food emoji: saka-saka, maboké and chikwangue

River fish is at the centre of the table 🐟🎣. Maboké is fish (or chicken) seasoned with chilli and steamed in a parcel of leaves 🐟🌿🌶️; saka-saka is pounded cassava leaves cooked down with palm oil and often peanut paste or dried fish 🥬🥜; moambe is a palm-nut sauce for chicken 🍗🥘. On the side comes cassava in some form: chikwangue (also called kwanga), a fermented cassava loaf wrapped in leaves, or foufou, a stiff cassava dough. There is no cassava emoji: 🫜 (root vegetable) and 🍠 are the closest. Fried plantain 🍌 is everywhere.

Safou, the purple African plum eaten roasted or boiled in season, has no emoji, so people just write the word; avocado, mango and pineapple 🥑🥭🍍 do have theirs. A cold beer 🍺 at an outdoor bar, with rumba playing, is the classic Brazzaville evening.

Diables Rouges, holidays and the emoji people send

The national football team is the Diables Rouges, the Red Devils, so fans write 🇨🇬⚽😈. Their great moment was winning the Africa Cup of Nations in 1972 🏆, and CARA Brazzaville won the African Cup of Champions Clubs in 1974. Brazzaville hosted the first All-Africa Games in 1965 and the African Games again in 2015 🏅.

The national holiday is 15 August, Independence Day, marking independence from France in 1960, sent as 🇨🇬🎉🎆 with "Bonne fête de l'Indépendance !" or "Vive le Congo !". 10 June is the Day of National Reconciliation 🕊️, and 28 November marks the proclamation of the Republic in 1958. Most Congolese are Christian, so Christmas ✝️🎄 is a big family holiday.

How to type French and Lingala letters and the CFA franc

French is the official language, and CLDR estimates about 3.7 million French speakers in a population of about 6.1 million. Lingala and Kituba (Munukutuba) are the national languages: Lingala is the everyday language of Brazzaville and the north, Kituba of the south and Pointe-Noire. French needs à â æ ç é è ê ë î ï ô œ ù û ü ÿ and its quotation marks « », written with a space inside. Lingala writes two open vowels with letters of their own, ɛ (open e) and ɔ (open o), and can mark tone with accents (á, â, ǎ), though everyday writing usually leaves tones out and often writes ɛ and ɔ as plain e and o: matɔndɔ and matondo are the same "thank you". See our French and Lingala collections for each language's full set.

On Windows, hold Alt and type on the number pad: 0233 é, 0232 è, 0234 ê, 0224 à, 0231 ç, 0244 ô, 0156 œ, 0171 «, 0187 ». ɛ and ɔ have no Alt code; in Word type 025B or 0254 and press Alt + X. On a Mac, Option + E then the vowel gives an acute, Option + ` a grave, Option + I a circumflex, Option + U a diaeresis, Option + C gives ç, Option + Q œ and Option + \ «. On a phone, long-press the vowel or the c; for ɛ and ɔ, copy them from here or add a Lingala keyboard if yours offers one. In HTML they are ɛ and ɔ.

The currency is the Central African CFA franc (code XAF), shared with Cameroon, Gabon, Chad, the Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea and pegged to the euro. It has no sign of its own in Unicode: people write FCFA after the amount, as in 5 000 FCFA. The ₣ sign was made for the old French franc and is not used for it; in emoji, 💵 💰 stand for money in general.