Kongo

The Kongo peoples of the lower Congo River basin and the Atlantic coast developed one of the most centralized states in sub-Saharan Africa, the Kingdom of Kongo, with a sophisticated bureaucracy, provincial governors, and an extensive currency system using nzimbu shells. Their early encounter with Portuguese traders in the late fifteenth century made the Kingdom of Kongo one of the first African polities to engage diplomatically with European powers as an equal.