Kinshasa in Congo
Friday, 3 February 2023 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Africa / Afrika General
Reading Time: 2 minutes
© flickr.com – Antoine Moens de Hase/cc-by-2.0
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Kinshasa (
Lingala : Kinsásá), formerly Léopoldville (
Dutch : Leopoldstad), is the
capital and
largest city of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo . Once a site of fishing and trading villages situated along the
Congo River , Kinshasa is now one of the world’s fastest growing
megacities .
The city of Kinshasa is also one of the DRC’s 26 provinces . Because the administrative boundaries of the city-province cover a vast area, over 90 percent of the city-province’s land is rural in nature, and the urban area occupies a small but expanding section on the western side.
Memorial at Kinshasa train station © flickr.com - MONUSCO - Abel Kavanagh/cc-by-sa-2.0
Kinshasa is Africa’s third-largest metropolitan area after
Cairo and
Lagos . It is also the world’s largest nominally
Francophone urban area, with French being the language of government, education, media, public services and high-end commerce in the city, while
Lingala is used as a
lingua franca in the street. Kinshasa hosted the 14th
Francophonie Summit in October 2012.
Residents of Kinshasa are known as
Kinois (in French and sometimes in English) or Kinshasans (English). The indigenous people of the area include the Humbu and
Teke . The city faces
Brazzaville , the capital of the neighbouring
Republic of the Congo . Although the river span is 7 km wide at this point, the two cities are the world’s second-closest pair of capital cities (after
Vatican City and
Rome ).
Read more on
Wikivoyage Kinshasa and
Wikipedia Kinshasa (
Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State -
Weather report by weather.com -
Global Passport Power Rank -
Travel Risk Map -
Democracy Index -
GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank -
Global Competitiveness Report -
Corruption Perceptions Index -
Press Freedom Index -
World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index -
UN Human Development Index -
Global Peace Index -
Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index ). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at
comment@wingsch.net . Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.
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