Cercle (French colonial) would still fall under the Indigénat. The "Lamine Guèye law" of 7 April 1946 formally extended citizenship across the empire, indigènes included. Third, the law of 20 September 1947 removed the two tier court system and mandated equal access to public employment. Reduced to a political subdivision roughly equivalent to a French department and stripped of the personal power of the Cercle Commander system, the Cercle name retained enough imperial connotations to be changed by most nations upon independence to Departments or Sub-Prefectures. Mali is the only nation in Sub-Saharan Africa to retain the name Cercle for its second level
Pre-colonial history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Pre-colonial history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo The pre-colonial history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo encompasses the political, economic and social history of the territory of the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo before the arrival of European colonial rule in the late 19th century. The current territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo was occupied by humans in the Paleolithic at least 80,000 years ago. Waves of Bantu migrations from 2000 BC to 500 AD moved into the basin from the northwest and covered the precolonial states absorbed or overthrown by the colonial powers. The