Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem is a  historian, professor of the University of Kinshasa and was an associate researcher to CNRS and the University of the Sorbonne (Paris) from 1999 to 2004.

He taught at the University of Lubumbashi Brazzaville and Quebec, and was the director of associated studies at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

In 2010 he was the scientific coordinator of the General Office of the Fiftieth Anniversary of Independence for his country, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Professor Ndaywel is also author of History of the Congo (Louvain-la-Neuve, Duculot, 1998) a fabulous book that has been translated into Spanish and published by Ediciones La Catarata, and became part of Casa África's essay collection in 2011. In this book, Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem presents us with the complete history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, from Palaeolithic times to the present day, and is about one of the largest countries in Africa, and has great strategic importance and a unique colonial past in the continent. The book shows us DRC's history, the different states and kingdoms in the Zaire basin; its relationship with far away Europe in the 16th century; the unending search for the birth of the Nile which led to the discovery of the Great Lakes, with figures such as Stanley and Livingstone; the Belgium Congo and Leopold II's reign; the wars of occupation and continued resistance of the Congolese; the first free elections with Lumumba as Prime Minister; Mobutu's dictatorship of more than thirty years and the successive governments and uprisings.