Bangui

Bangui lies beside rapids on the northern bank of the Ubangi River, at the point where navigation from the south is interrupted. The Bobangi name for the rapids gave the place its name. The river turns south below the site and joins the Congo, linking the forest interior to the great western African waterways.

Archaeological sites around the rapids preserve Iron Age furnaces, pottery and tools from as early as the first millennium BCE. Bobangi and other riverine traders used canoes to move fish, salt, iron and forest products. Villages controlled landing places and portages around the rapids, making the banks a chain of exchange points rather than an empty frontier.

The rapids made this position strategic: goods moving upstream had to be landed and carried around them. The significance of the place came from the Bobangi trade and from the natural barrier that shaped movement along the river. Landing places beside the rapids were customs points where river chiefs regulated canoes and passing goods, and the landings drew fish, cassava and forest produce from nearby communities into the trade.