Kinshasa

• 1. Introduction

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  Across a stretch of the Congo River four kilometers wide, with no bridge to cross it, two national capitals face each other. Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, stands on the south bank. Brazzaville, the smaller capital of the Republic of the Congo, stands opposite. No other pair of capitals in the world sits closer together. Kinshasa is also enormous, with an estimated 18.5 million people in 2026. That makes it the seventh-most populous city proper in the world, and the largest of them outside China. Its residents are called Kinois, and its name is not the one it began with. This documentary asks how a river market became one of the fastest-growing megacities on Earth. It asks why colonial planners set one part of the city apart from another, and what wars did to the capital. And it asks how a place this large lives with floods, erosion and very little central planning.

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• 2. A Place Of Exchange

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  On the 14th of March 1877, Henry Morton Stanley recorded a visit to "the king of Nshasa". He wrote this during his crossing of Africa from Zanzibar to Boma, which lasted from 1874 to 1877. His account is the documentation behind the claim that the historical name of the place was Nshasa. What that name means is still argued.

  The anthropologist and ethnologist Paul Raymaekers links the name to a blend of Kikongo and Kihumbu. In his reading, the prefix Ki(n) marks a hill or inhabited area, while Nsasa or Nshasa means a bag of salt. He pictures a major trading site where people from the Lower Congo, now Kongo Central Province, exchanged salt for iron, ivory and enslaved people. Those goods came from traders of the Upper Congo, now Tshopo Province.

  Hendrik van Moorsel, an anthropologist, historian and researcher, tells a different story. In his account, Bateke fishermen swapped fish for cassava with locals along the riverbank, at a place called Ulio. The Teke word for exchange is Utsaya, and a place of exchange is Intsaya. So Ulio became Intsaya, then Kintsaya under Kikongo influence, and finally Kinshasa.

  A third account also centers on trade. Nshasa is regarded as the main place of exchange on the southern bank of Pool Malebo, where bartering predated the commercial boom of Kintambo. There, Teke brokers sold ivory and enslaved people, bought from Banunu traders, in return for European goods carried by the Zombo and Kongo.

  The European name arrived in 1881 and lasted until 1966. Stanley called the settlement Léopoldville, in honor of Leopold II of Belgium. Then Mobutu Sese Seko pursued a policy he called Authenticity, which sought to give people and places native names again. On the 2nd of May 1966, the government announced that the major cities would regain their pre-colonial names. Léopoldville became Kinshasa, a tribute to the village of Nshasa. The change took effect on the 30th of June, the sixth anniversary of independence.

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• 3. Port Above The Rapids

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  Before 1881, two trading centres named Ntamo and Ntsaasa stood on this shore, both part of the Tio Kingdom. On the 1st of August 1881, Stanley founded a station here, known as Léopold II's Station. It served his employer, King Leopold II of the Belgians, who went on to take most of the Congo Basin as the Congo Free State. Leopold held it not as a colony but as his private property.

  The post flourished for a simple reason. It was the first navigable port on the Congo River above Livingstone Falls, a chain of rapids more than 300 km downstream. At first, porters carried every load between Léopoldville and Matadi, the port below the rapids, 150 km from the coast. The Matadi-Kinshasa portage railway, completed in 1898, offered a way around the rapids and sparked rapid growth. In 1914, a pipeline was installed to carry crude oil from Matadi to the steamers waiting upriver.

  A Royal Decree of the 1st of July 1923, countersigned by Colonies Minister Louis Franc, made the city capital of the Belgian Congo. It replaced Boma, a town in the Congo estuary. The move was finalized in 1929 and produced a new administrative quarter named Kalina, now Gombe. It lay between Kinshasa, an emerging commercial center, and the older settlement of Léopoldville-West. Earlier, the city had been an urban district covering only Kintambo and today's Gombe around Ngaliema Bay. The communes of Kinshasa, Barumbu and Lingwala came next. In the 1930s they mostly housed employees of Chanic, Filtisaf and Utex Africa.

  A legislative ordinance of the 25th of June 1941 gave Kinshasa city status and created an Urban Committee, with 5,000 hectares allotted. The city was split into an urban zone and an indigenous zone to the south. When forced labor ended in 1945, people from rural regions poured in, and Léopoldville became mostly Bakongo. In 1954, Lovanium University was founded, the first university in the colony.

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• 4. The Neutral Zone

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  By 1902, the Kitambo area, now Kintambo, was covered entirely by European buildings. Prefabricated residences known as Danish houses, shipped from Belgium, gradually replaced the temporary tents of early explorers, soldiers and mercenaries. Europeans worked as engineers, architects, carpenters and builders, supported by mercenaries and trained African laborers.

  An eight-kilometer track linked Léopoldville, nicknamed Léo, to Kinshasa, and the rainy season often made it impassable. Transport was basic. There were a few bicycles, limited private cars and even dromedaries. In 1911, the colonial administrator George Moulaert drafted a comprehensive urban plan that guided development for decades. The First World War cut the Belgian Congo off from Europe and brought relative prosperity. Motorboats and trucks increasingly replaced canoes and human porters.

  A decree of 1922 required large companies to house their African workers. Huileries du Congo Belge built workers' camps, while smaller firms often ignored the rule. Religious missions lent money for self-built homes until they were overwhelmed. A special fund then offered interest-free loans for houses made from local materials.

  Africans were confined to separate quarters called cités indigènes, such as Léo I and Léo II. Authorities laid these out in rough grids and gave them no sewers, only simple pit latrines. In the 1920s, growth pushed these quarters toward European districts near the railway and Boulevard Albert 1er, now Boulevard du 30 Juin. De facto racial segregation became de jure in 1929.

  In 1933, worried settlers pushed the Léopoldville Urban Committee to create a buffer called the neutral zone. Planners recommended 800 meters, but logistics and exemptions for some Europeans living there cut it to 250 to 300 meters. It became Parc De Bock, created by District Commissioner Fernand De Bock with the agronomist Roeck. Today it is the Kinshasa Botanical Garden. The park included the Kinshasa Zoological Garden and vegetable gardens tended by unemployed volunteers. It served as a sanitary barrier and a leisure space for Europeans. Immediately south lay the African area, with Ndolo Airport, Kinshasa Central Market, the General Hospital, a golf course, a cemetery and Camp Léopold II, now Camp Kokolo.

  After the Second World War, a housing project called the Nouvelle Cité rose on 407 hectares in Dendale, now the commune of Kasa-Vubu. Within two years, by 1947, it housed over 8,000 residents, including the future president Joseph Kasa-Vubu. In 1949, the Office des Cités Africaines began a ten-year plan for design, infrastructure and housing. By 1959, over 40,000 homes had been built. The urban planner Georges Ricquier led the work at first, and Maurice Heymans took over in 1953. The plan kept European dominance over the historical center, La Gombe, and promoted industry in Limete.

  Between 1954 and 1960, the office built Matete, Bandalungwa and Lemba, along with the satellite city of Ndjili. These districts had planned roads, drainage and sewers. Two-story houses and collective apartment buildings appeared for the first time. After independence, the Mission Française d'Urbanisme drew up plans in the 1960s that expected more automobile traffic. They did not foresee how fast the population would grow.

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• 5. Independence And War

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  Independence came on the 30th of June 1960, after riots in 1959. The country elected Patrice Lumumba as its first prime minister, but Western interests saw his perceived pro-Soviet leanings as a threat. This was the height of the Cold War, and the United States and Belgium did not want to lose control of the Congo's strategic wealth, in particular its uranium. Less than a year after Lumumba's election, the Belgians and Americans bought the support of his Congolese rivals. That set in motion the events that ended in his assassination.

  In 1964, Moïse Tshombe decreed the expulsion of all nationals of the Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Mali, as well as all political refugees from Rwanda. In 1965, with American and Belgian help, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seized power. Kinshasa grew rapidly under him. People came from across the country in search of fortune, or to escape ethnic strife elsewhere.

  In 1991, soldiers protesting unpaid wages rioted in the city. A rebel uprising followed, and in 1997 it finally brought down Mobutu's regime. The First Congo War of 1996-1997 grew out of the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. More than two million Rwandan Hutu refugees had entered eastern Zaire, and Mobutu's government could not manage the crisis. The Belgian scholar Filip Reyntjens describes the war as the overlap of two aims. One was the genuine resistance of Congolese Tutsi who feared retaliation. The other was the Rwandan government's use of that resistance to justify sending its army.

  In May 1997, Kinshasa fell to the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo, backed by Rwanda and Uganda and led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Mobutu was overthrown on the 17th of May. Extrajudicial killings, torture and rape followed, carried out by AFDL and Rwandan Patriotic Army forces. From the 18th to the 22nd of May, Congolese Red Cross volunteers collected between 228 and 318 bodies in Kinshasa and its outskirts. United Nations reports say security worsened further through June. Public executions took place, and bodies were burned in Masina, Matete and Kingabwa. At the GLM building, detainees were executed and their bodies thrown into the Congo River. Human rights advocates, alerted by local fishermen, got the practice stopped. Young child soldiers known as Kadogo enforced discipline with the chicotte, a leather-thonged whip, and floggings sometimes killed.

  Between the 29th of September and the 1st of October 1997, armed factions fighting in Brazzaville fired artillery across the river into Kinshasa. At least 21 civilians died. Forces in Kinshasa shelled Brazzaville for two consecutive days in return.

  The Second Congo War began after Laurent-Désiré Kabila fell out with his former allies in Rwanda and Uganda. He dismissed the Rwandan General James Kabarebe as Chief of Staff and demanded that all Rwandan troops leave. Rwanda and Uganda backed a new rebel group, the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie, which launched its rebellion from Goma on the 2nd of August 1998. Angola and Zimbabwe sent troops that halted its advance toward Kinshasa. The country effectively split, with Kabila holding the west and center, reinforced by contingents from Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Chad and Sudan.

  On the 13th of August 1998, rebel and allied troops seized the Inga hydroelectric power station in Bas-Congo and stopped its turbines for three weeks. Electricity and water to Kinshasa were cut, and hospitals suffered. In the night of the 27th to the 28th of August, Zimbabwe Defence Forces used heavy artillery on crowded districts including Kimbanseke, Masina and Ndjili. About 50 civilians died and 282 were wounded. On the 28th of August in Mont-Ngafula, Congolese soldiers killed two Red Cross volunteers who were trying to rescue victims.

  On the 28th of October 2000, Kabila's security forces arrested at least 93 people, 60 soldiers and 33 civilians, accused of plotting a coup with Anselme Masasu Nindaga, a founding member of the AFDL. Some detainees were executed or tortured to death. Others were held for over three years, until a general amnesty freed them.

  Laurent-Désiré Kabila was assassinated on the 16th of January 2001, and his son Joseph was quickly installed as president. The Inter-Congolese Dialogue opened at Sun City, South Africa, on the 25th of February 2002. On the 30th of July 2002, Rwanda and the DRC signed a peace accord in Pretoria. Rwanda agreed to withdraw its troops in exchange for the disarmament and repatriation of Hutu militias such as the FDLR. A similar deal with Uganda followed in Luanda on the 6th of September 2002. The Global and All-Inclusive Agreement of the 17th of December 2002 set up a transitional power-sharing government, and its institutions were inaugurated on the 30th of June 2003.

  Joseph Kabila stayed in power until 2019. His disputed victory in the 2006 presidential election set off widespread unrest, and European Union forces deployed to support MONUSCO. In 2016, the electoral commission announced a two-year delay to new presidential elections. Mass protests in September and December brought street barricades, violent clashes and many civilian deaths.

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• 6. River, Hills, And Floods

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  Kinshasa covers 9,965 square kilometers in a crescent along the southern shore of Pool Malebo, on flat, low terrain averaging about 300 meters above sea level. The pool itself is roughly 35 kilometers long and 25 kilometers wide, dotted with islands and islets. The city has four main features. The Kinshasa Plain is a banana-shaped stretch of sandy alluvial deposits, about 20,000 hectares in all. It holds densely populated communes such as Limete, Kalamu and Bandalungwa. Poor drainage leaves it open to flooding in every rainy season. Above it, a terrace of soft sandstone, 10-25 meters high, runs mostly through the west between N'djili and Mont-Ngafula. Further out, hills rise past 700 meters, cut by deep valleys and cirque-shaped formations.

  The Congo River is Africa's second-longest, after the Nile, and has the continent's highest discharge. Barges can travel between Kinshasa and Kisangani. Downstream of Kinshasa, the river holds enough hydroelectric potential to power roughly half of Africa's population.

  Rivers drain toward Pool Malebo in a branching pattern. The N'djili and N'sele rise far beyond the city, while the Funa, Lukunga and Bombo begin in local watersheds. The Funa is often wrongly called the Kalamu, a Teke-Humbu word for watercourse. The N'djili regularly floods in its lower reaches and disrupts infrastructure. Broad, flat-bottomed valleys called dambos, traces of an ancient river system, stay waterlogged all year.

  Recent studies put the runoff coefficient at about 13%, against near zero before the city spread. Water now runs off faster, so floods come more often. On steep slopes, groundwater undercutting and surface runoff carve erosion cirques that end in landslides. These hazards are worst on the informal fringe, where forest has been cleared.

  Rain falls in Kinshasa for eight to nine months of the year, and it leaches the city's sandy, acidic soils of their nutrients. The best farmland lies in alluvial and colluvial deposits. Under the Köppen system, the climate is tropical wet and dry. The rainy season runs from October through May, and the dry season from June through September. Because the city lies south of the equator, its dry season begins near the June winter solstice. That is the opposite of African cities farther north with the same climate.

  Forest cover fell from 46% in 1960 to 36% in 1982, and to just 15% by 1987. Gallery forests along the watercourses shrank into fragmented fallows. Residents introduced fruit trees and ornamental plants, often grown as living hedges.

  Lola ya Bonobo, in Kinshasa, is the world's only sanctuary for orphaned bonobos. Nsele Valley Park is the largest urban park in the city.

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• 7. A City Of Newcomers

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  In 1889, Kinshasa had about 5,000 people. By 1910 it had 10,000, and by 1930 it had 39,530, growing by roughly 4,700 a year. The 1940s lifted the total from 50,000 to more than 200,000. At independence in 1960, the city covered 5,500 hectares and held 400,000 residents. A 3.8% annual growth rate then took it to 2.6 million in 1984 and nearly 12 million by 2015. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme counts an average of 390,000 new migrants a year, many fleeing conflict or economic hardship.

  In 2015, the commune of Kimbanseke held 2,631,205 people. Tiny Kalamu, at just 6.6 square kilometers, held 974,669.

  The Humbu, Teke and Bamfununga were the original inhabitants, joined by Yaka and Banunu Bobangi from Kongo Central and the river-trading Bayanzi. They formed the majority when Stanley reached Pool Malebo. Chief Ngaliema ceded Humbu land to Stanley without consulting its traditional owners. Scholars cite this as evidence that the Teke were not landowners in the way the Humbu and Bamfunuga were.

  The Lari, from the Republic of the Congo, settled on fertile vacant land and introduced cabbage, carrots, tomatoes and cucumbers. The Coastmen, or Ndingari, came from present-day Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Benin, Guinea and Togo. Mostly Muslim, they worked in public works, education and commerce, and they introduced polygamy and wax-printed fabrics known as pagnes wax.

  The Zombo, from Maquela do Zombo in Angola's Uíge Province, are the largest foreign African community in the city. From the 1950s, many worked at the port of CITAS, handling palm derivatives, copal resin, cotton and ivory. Outside work, they began door-to-door trade in rice, doughnuts and beans, which grew into street vending with handmade pousse-pousse carts. They also introduced women's footwear made from repurposed automobile tires. Their numbers rose during the Second World War, as the Estado Novo regime of António de Oliveira Salazar and its PIDE police pushed many Angolans to flee. Long-established Lebanese, Greek, Indian and Pakistani communities remain active.

  Inside the country, migration followed two main routes in the colonial era. One was the river, for people from the north and center of the Congo River. The other was the road through Bandundu and Kongo Central. The flow peaked in the 1990s and during the Congo Wars, when Kinshasa became a refuge for displaced people.

  French is the official language, and Kinshasa is the largest officially Francophone city in the world, though many residents struggle to speak it. Lingala is the lingua franca of the street. Tshiluba, Kikongo and Swahili are also national languages. In October 2012, the city hosted the 14th Francophonie Summit. In 2015, UNESCO named Kinshasa a City of Music.

  UN projections put the metropolitan population at 35 million by 2050-58 million by 2075 and 83 million by 2100.

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• 8. Money And Mandate

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  Kinshasa's boom years earned it the nicknames Kin la belle, Kin-Kiese and Kin la joie. During this period, nostalgically called la belle époque, factories made food, textiles and metal goods, and assembled products for home and export. By the 1970s, the city employed about 25% of the salaried workforce of Zaire and accounted for nearly half of the national wage bill. In 1977, it held 49.9% of the country's manufacturing industries and 22.8% of all registered businesses. That same year, wages covered 62% of basic needs. By 1988, only 20% of workers could meet basic living costs on what they earned.

  Looting in 1991 and 1992 devastated the economy. An estimated 300,000 executives and skilled workers lost their jobs with no compensation, and the Agence Nationale des Entrepreneurs du Zaïre counted about 100,000 jobs lost. Industry has since stagnated or been dismantled, and the informal sector now employs nearly 70% of the labor force. A 2004 investigation of 976,000 workers found 70% in informal work, 17% in the public sector, 9% in the formal private sector and 3% elsewhere.

  Still, Kinshasa has about 13% of the DRC's population and generates approximately 85% of its gross domestic product. By late 2022, its foreign exchange reserves had passed $4.5 billion. In 2005, mean household spending came to about $1 per day per person, and the median was 66 cents. A 2016 ranking found it Africa's most expensive city for expatriate employees. China has been deeply involved since the 1970s, when it financed the Palais du Peuple. In 2007-2008, China and Congo signed an agreement for an $8.5 billion loan for infrastructure. Chinese entrepreneurs have since come to dominate local markets, displacing Congolese, West African, Indian and Lebanese merchants.

  Kinshasa is both a city and one of the 26 provinces of the DRC. Ordinance No. 68/024 of the 20th of January 1968 gave it provincial status and expanded its communes from 11 to 24. A 48-member Provincial Assembly forms its legislature. Each commune is led by a Bourgmestre, elected by the communal council. In the provincial elections of the 20th of December 2023, the presidential coalition, the Union Sacrée de la Nation, took power. It is led by President Félix Tshisekedi's party, the UDPS, which won 14 seats. Daniel Bumba became governor on the 21st of June 2024. The city also hosts the headquarters of MONUSCO.

  Since 2016, the Belgian development agency Enabel has sponsored a €6 million community program, starting in the hill commune of Kimbanseke. UN-Habitat says Kinshasa is expanding by eight square kilometers a year and calls many of the new neighborhoods slums. The rural commune of Maluku accounts for 79% of the city-province's land, with only 200,000-300,000 residents. In October 2023, the provincial government created a strategic committee to oversee Kinshasa Kia Mona, an urban expansion project in the Maluku district.

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