Lwebo

History

The town was founded in November 1885 by Ludwig Wolf and a group of other European colonists as an outpost of King Leopold II of Belgium's Congo Free State. The state used this outpost to claim the surrounding region, despite it already being inhabited, notably by the nearby Kuba Kingdom. The trading post was sold to the Sanford Exploring Expedition, an American company, in December 1886, and it was sold again to 1888 to the Société anonyme belge pour le commerce du Haut-Congo. A mission was founded in the town three years later, by William Henry Sheppard and Samuel Lapsley. In 1904 it again became property of the Congo Free State. In 1908, it was incorporated into the Belgian Congo. A bridge over the Lulua River opened in the town in the late 1950s, shortly before the Democratic Republic of the Congo gained its independence.