Nola is where the Sangha is born. At this point in the far southwest of the Central African Republic, the Kadéï and Mambéré rivers meet and form the great river that flows down towards the Congo, marking the border with Cameroon. That confluence explains why there is a town here: it is the natural crossroads of roads and waterways for the whole forest region in the west of the country.
It is the capital of the Sangha-Mbaéré prefecture and one of the largest towns in the southwest, with an economy built on artisanal diamonds, gold, timber, trade and farming. It has diamond buying offices, a Catholic mission dating from 1939 and a colonial history that began early: the explorer Alfred Fourneau signed a treaty with a local chief in 1891 —from whom the town took its name— and the French set up a military post in 1893.
For the traveller, Nola is above all a stopover: the place you pass through on the way to Bayanga and the Dzanga-Sangha reserve, about a hundred kilometres further south. This page describes it with the verifiable information available and with the warning it deserves: the town was at the centre of the conflict between 2013 and 2016, and foreign ministry advisories still cover the whole of the Central African Republic.
The European presence in Nola began in 1891, when the explorer Alfred Fourneau signed a treaty with a local chief and the settlement took his name; in 1893 the French set up a military post. In 1911 the territory became part of German Neukamerun under an agreement between France and Germany, and France reconquered it during the First World War with the support of local Gbaya chiefs. In 1939 the Catholic mission was founded, now part of the diocese of Berbérati. During the colonial period, Nola was one of the settings of the sleeping sickness prevention campaign known as lomidinisation, now discredited. The town was at the centre of the contemporary conflict: it was taken by the Séléka coalition on 28 March 2013 and by anti-balaka militias on 12 February 2014, with civilian casualties, and only in September 2016 was it declared free of armed groups.
Read the full history ↓The far southwest is pure equatorial rainforest. It is Aka land, it holds the Dzanga Bai salt clearing with its hundreds of forest elephants, and it is the only corner of the country with organised tourism.
Read the history of The southwest and the Dzanga-Sangha forest →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Nola exists for a very specific geographical reason: two big rivers meet here. The Kadéï, which flows down from Cameroon, and the Mambéré, which comes from the north of the Central African Republic, join at this point to form the Sangha River, the great watercourse of the southwest. The Sangha then heads south, marking much of the border with Cameroon along the way, until it flows into the Congo River.
In a region of dense forest with no roads, a confluence of that size is the equivalent of a motorway junction. Dugout canoes arrived here by two different routes, and a single route left from here towards the south. All the region's traffic passed through this point: fish, forest products and iron, and later rubber, ivory, timber and diamonds.
The town sits between 395 and 442 metres above sea level, depending on the source, in a humid equatorial climate that is hot and rainy for much of the year. It marks the northern edge of the great forest block of the Congo Basin. South of here the forest closes in and runs unbroken as far as the Sangha Trinational and beyond.
The commune of Nola covers about 3,903 square kilometres and is the capital of the Sangha-Mbaéré prefecture, with a triple administrative status: commune, sub-prefecture seat and prefecture capital. Population figures vary by source. The data gathered by the French Wikipedia give 29,181 inhabitants in 2003 and 76,282 in 2015, while the English version cites 41,462 from the 2012 census. Either way, it is the main urban centre for the whole forested southwest.
The European presence in this corner of the continent began early, in the middle of the scramble for Central Africa. In 1891 the French explorer Alfred Fourneau signed a treaty with a local chief, and the settlement took that chief's name: Nola. Two years later, in 1893, the French set up a military post here.
The interest was no accident. Whoever controlled the confluence of the Kadéï and the Mambéré controlled access to the whole Sangha river system, and with it one of the routes into the interior of the continent. Rivalry with German interests in Cameroon and with the Belgians in the Congo made this point a strategic objective.
The region's 20th century began under the concession company regime. Under this system the French state granted private companies vast areas in exchange for a fee, with the right to exploit rubber and other forest products by coercing the local population. It is one of the harshest chapters in the history of French Equatorial Africa, and it is extensively documented.
In 1939 the Catholic Church founded a mission in Nola. As everywhere in the Central African interior, for decades the mission took on education and health roles that the state did not cover, and its social influence remains. Today the town's parishes belong to the Diocese of Berbérati.
There is a chapter in Nola's history that surprises anyone who arrives with the standard colonial map in mind: for a few years, this region was German rather than French.
In 1911 France and Germany settled the Agadir Crisis with an agreement. Under it, France ceded a large strip of French Equatorial Africa to Germany in exchange for recognition in Morocco. This enlarged territory became known as Neukamerun, or New Cameroon, and its corridors reached as far as the Congo and Ubangi rivers. The Central African southwest, including the Nola region, fell within the ceded area.
The interlude did not last long. When the First World War broke out, the Allied powers attacked Germany's African colonies, and France retook Neukamerun between 1914 and 1916. According to historical accounts, local Gbaya chiefs supported the French forces in that campaign. It shows how far European wars were also fought by African actors and for African reasons.
What remains of that episode is mostly administrative traces and local memory. But it is a historical layer that sets the Central African southwest apart from the rest of the country, and it explains why this region has always looked towards Cameroon as much as towards Bangui. That orientation still holds today: the usual way into Dzanga-Sangha goes through Cameroon, not through the Central African capital.
The colonial period also left darker episodes of another kind. Nola was one of the sites of the sleeping sickness prevention campaign known as lomidinisation. This policy involved giving a drug to large numbers of people as a preventive measure, and it caused documented harm. Medical historians now regard it as discredited.
Nola's economy rests on three pillars: artisanal diamond and gold mining, logging and trade. Farming, small-scale livestock raising and fish farming provide a base for subsistence.
The Central African southwest is part of the country's diamond-bearing zone, and Nola has diamond buying offices. Artisanal mining is done in alluvial deposits with shovels, sieves and water. It employs tens of thousands of people across the country and for decades has been one of the main sources of cash income in the interior. During the conflict it has also been a source of disputes and a way for armed groups to finance themselves. That problem led to international restrictions on exports of Central African diamonds under the Kimberley Process.
Timber is the other major resource. The Sangha-Mbaéré prefecture lies at the heart of the southwestern forest block, the same block that continues south to the Sangha Trinational. For decades industrial logging was the region's main source of formal employment. The sawmill at Bayanga, a hundred kilometres to the south, once employed around four hundred people. The tension between logging and conservation runs through the whole prefecture.
That contrast is one of the keys to understanding the southwest. The same prefecture holds one of the country's most intensive extractive economies and one of the best-preserved forests on the planet, inscribed by UNESCO on the World Heritage List in 2012.
The cycle of conflict that began on 24 March 2013, when the Séléka coalition took Bangui, reached Nola very quickly. Séléka forces took the town on 28 March 2013, just four days after the capital fell.
In the months that followed, the anti-balaka militias emerged, and in many regions the violence took on a serious intercommunal dimension. On 12 February 2014 these militias took Nola. According to the English Wikipedia, 17 Muslim civilians were killed in the town during that episode. This account sticks to what the sources document. It does not take sides in the conflict or add figures that are not attributed to a source.
The situation slowly stabilised. In September 2016 Nola was declared free of armed groups. A town's recovery after something like this is slow and uneven. Rebuilding trade, restoring the administration, rebuilding trust between communities and restarting the timber and diamond economies all take years.
Today Nola is still the capital of Sangha-Mbaéré and the main urban centre of the forested southwest. It is also the last reasonable place to restock on the overland route to Bayanga and the Dzanga-Sangha reserve, a hundred kilometres to the south. That role as a stopover is what earns it a place in any guide to the country.
Official advisories still cover the whole country. The United States has kept the entire Central African Republic at Level 4, Do Not Travel, since 15 January 2026. France rates the whole country as a red zone except Bangui and Bimbo, according to its update of 30 June 2026. There is also an important practical change: the usual way into Dzanga-Sangha is no longer the overland route from Bangui through Nola. Visitors now enter through Cameroon, flying to Douala or Yaoundé and then transferring to the Sangha River. For a century Nola was the southwest's unavoidable crossing point, but it has been left largely to one side of this new pattern of access.
