It occupies 40,130 square kilometres (15,490 sq mi) in the north west of the country and had a population of 594,428 inhabitants in 2014.

[7] The Kongo people (or Bakongo) occupied the valley of the Congo (or Zaire) River in the mid-thirteenth century, and formed the Kingdom of Kongo, which existed from 1390 until 1891 as an independent state, and until 1914 as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Portugal.

[10] During the 1961–1974 Angolan War of Independence, a large fraction of the Bakongo fled to the Republic of Zaire.

[14] The main rivers of Zaire Province are: Congo, Mbridge, Lufunde, Zadi, Cuilo and Buenga.

[15] The national language spoken in the province is Kikongo and the predominant ethnic group in the region is Bakongo.