EP131: Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba was the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for just ten weeks in 1960.

The brevity of Lumumba's time in charge reflects he difficulties of governing an enormous, ethnically diverse country deliberately underdeveloped by its former Belgian colonial masters.

But it was the fomenting rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union over Africa that had the largest impact on Lumumba's time as prime minister.

My guest today is Stuart A. Reid. Stuart is a Senior Fellow for History and Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was previously an editor at Foreign Affairs between 2008 and 2024. He is also the author of The Lumumba Plot, which has just been released in paperback.