Kinshasa (; French: [kinʃasa]; Lingala: Kinsásá), formerly named Léopoldville (Dutch: Leopoldstad) from 1881 to 1966, is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kinshasa is one of the world's fastest-growing megacities, with an estimated population of 18.5 million in 2026. It is the most densely populated city in the DRC, the third-most populous city and third-largest metropolitan area in Africa, the world's seventh-most populous city proper (the most populous outside of China), and the fourth-most populous capital city in the world. It is the leading economic, political, and cultural center of the DRC, housing several industries including manufacturing, telecommunications, banking, and entertainment. The city also hosts some of the DRC's significant institutional buildings, such as the People's Palace, Palace of the Nation, Constitutional Court, Court of Cassation, Council of State, African Union City, Marble Palace, Government House, Kinshasa Financial Center, and other national departments and agencies.
The Kinshasa site has been inhabited by Teke and Humbu people for centuries and was known as Nshasa before transforming into a commercial hub during the 19th and 20th centuries. The city was named Léopoldville by Henry Morton Stanley in honor of Leopold II of Belgium. The name was changed to Kinshasa in 1966 during Mobutu Sese Seko's Zairianisation campaign as a tribute to Nshasa village. Covering 9,965 square kilometers, Kinshasa stretches along the southern shores of the Pool Malebo on the Congo River. It forms an expansive crescent across flat, low-lying terrain at an average altitude of about 300 meters. Kinshasa borders the Mai-Ndombe, Kwilu, and Kwango Provinces to the east; the Congo River delineates its western and northern perimeters, constituting a natural border with the Republic of the Congo; to the south lies the Kongo Central Province. Across the river sits Brazzaville, the smaller capital of the neighboring Republic of the Congo, forming the world's closest pair of capital cities despite being separated by a four-kilometer-wide unbridged span of the Congo River.
Kinshasa is also one of the 26 provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is divided into 24 communes. With an expansive administrative region, over 90 percent of the province's land remains rural, while urban growth predominantly occurs on its western side. Kinshasa is the largest nominally Francophone urban area globally, with French being the language of government, education, media, public services and high-end commerce, while Lingala is used as a lingua franca in the street. The city's inhabitants are popularly known as Kinois, with the term "Kinshasans" used in English terminology.
The National Museum of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the DRC's most prominent and central museum. The College of Advanced Studies in Strategy and Defense is the highest military institution in the DRC. The National Pedagogical University is the DRC's first pedagogical university. N'Djili International Airport is the largest airport in the nation. In 2015, Kinshasa was designated as a City of Music by UNESCO and has been a member of the Creative Cities Network since then. Nsele Valley Park is the largest urban park in Kinshasa. According to the 2016 annual ranking, Kinshasa is Africa's most expensive city for expatriate employees, ahead of close to 200 global locations.
Toponymy
Sylvain Shomba Kinyamba et al. proposed two theories about the origin of the name Kinshasa. The first was proposed by anthropologist Paul Raymaekers, who connects the prefix Ki(n) to Kikongo and Kimbundu words that refer to a hill or an inhabited place. He links Nsasa or Nshasa to a "bag of salt" and suggests that the site served as a trading post where people arriving from the lower Congo River and the Atlantic Ocean brought salt to exchange for goods, including ivory and enslaved people, supplied by communities from the upper Congo.
The second theory, proposed by anthropologist and historian Hendrik van Moorsel, derives the name from Teke trading terminology. According to this view, Teke fishermen exchanged fish for cassava at a place first known as Ulio. The name then changed over time, becoming Intsaya, then Kintsaya, before becoming Kinshasa. Ethnographer Léo Bittremieux is also said to have used the spelling Kintshasa.
The name Nshasa is also associated with a major trading site on the southern shore of the Pool Malebo, where exchanges took place before Kintambo's commercial expansion. In van Moorsel's interpretation, the name derives from the Teke verb tsaya (or tsaa), meaning "to exchange", and the noun intsaya (or insaa), meaning "market" or "place of exchange". The site reportedly formed part of a trading network involving Teke intermediaries, Banunu Bobangi canoe traders, and Zombo and Kongo merchants exchanging ivory and enslaved people for European goods. Henry Morton Stanley recorded visiting Nshasa on 14 March 1877, during his expedition from Zanzibar to Boma.
History
In pre-colonial times, the area was inhabited by two trading centres, Ntamo and Ntsaasa, which were part of the Tio Kingdom.
The city was established as a trading post by Henry Morton Stanley in 1881. It was named Léopoldville in honor of Stanley's employer King Leopold II of the Belgians. He would then proceed to take control of most of the Congo Basin as the Congo Free State, not as a colony but as his private property. The post flourished as the first navigable port on the Congo River above Livingstone Falls, a series of rapids over 300 kilometres (190 miles) below Leopoldville. At first, all goods arriving by sea or being sent by sea had to be carried by porters between Léopoldville and Matadi, the port below the rapids and 150 km (93 mi) from the coast. The completion of the Matadi–Kinshasa portage railway, in 1898, provided an alternative route around the rapids and sparked the rapid development of Léopoldville. In 1914, a pipeline was installed so that crude oil could be transported from Matadi to the upriver steamers in Leopoldville. By 1923, the city was elevated to capital of the Belgian Congo, replacing the town of Boma in the Congo estuary, pursuant to the Royal Decree of 1 July 1923, countersigned by the Minister of the Colonies, Louis Franc. This transition, finalized on 31 October 1929, led to the development of a new administrative district between Kinshasa, which was growing as a trading center, and Léopoldville-West. The site, named Kalina (now Gombe), became the colonial administrative center and housed the governor-general's residence. The transfer was motivated by Léopoldville's position at the terminus of the Matadi–Kinshasa Railway and the beginning of the river's longest navigable stretch. Although the city already housed government offices, customs services, and courts, its primary purpose was initially to maintain communication between the colonial government and its overseas territories. The transfer of colonial services began in January with the headquarters of the colonial troops, followed by the agriculture and education services in July, the medical service in August, and the chief engineer's office and directorate-general of finance in September. The governor-general's cabinet moved in November, and the installation of all the governor-general's services in Kalina was completed in the first half of 1930.
Before transition, Léopoldville was an "urban district" that included Kintambo and Kalina, which developed around Ngaliema Bay, and as the city continued to develop, other communes, including Kinshasa, Barumbu, and Lingwala, were established and expanded. During the 1930s, these communes housed many employees of Chanic, Filtisaf, and Utex Africa. On 25 June 1941, Legislative Ordinance No. 293/AIMO granted Léopoldville city status and established an Urban Committee (Comité urbain) for an area of 5,000 hectares and a population of 53,000. The city also served as the colony's capital and the capital of the Congo-Kasaï province and the Moyen Congo district. It was divided into two zones: an urban zone comprising Léo II, Léo-Ouest, Kalina, Léo-I (Léo-Est), and Ndolo, and an indigenous zone (zone indigène) to the south. Following the end of forced labor in 1945, the urban population grew as Africans migrated from rural areas. The Kongo people thereafter became the city's predominant ethnic group.
During the 1950s, residential areas in Lemba, Matete, and part of N'djili were developed to house workers from the Limete industrial zone. The colony's first university, Lovanium University, opened in 1954. In 1957, Léopoldville contained 11 communes and six annexed zones. The communes included Kalamu, Dendale (now Kasa-Vubu), Saint Jean (now Lingwala), Ngiri-Ngiri, Kintambo, Limete, Bandalungwa, Gombe, Barumbu, Kinshasa, and Ngaliema. The six annexed zones were Lemba, Binza, Makala, Kimwenza, Kimbanseke, and Kingasani. N'djili and Matete were subsequently added as annexed zones.
After gaining its independence on 30 June 1960, following riots in 1959, the Republic of the Congo elected its first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba whose perceived pro-Soviet leanings were viewed as a threat by Western interests. This being the height of the Cold War, the U.S. and Belgium did not want to lose control of the strategic wealth of the Congo, in particular its uranium. Less than a year after Lumumba's election, the Belgians and the U.S. bought the support of his Congolese rivals and set in motion the events that culminated in Lumumba's assassination. In 1964, Moïse Tshombe decreed the expulsion of all nationals of Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Mali, as well as all political refugees from Rwanda. In 1965, with the help of the U.S. and Belgium, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seized power in the Congo. He initiated a policy of "authenticité", attempting to renativize the names of people and places in the country. On 2 May 1966, the government announced that the nation's major cities would be restored to their pre-colonial names, effective on 30 June, the sixth anniversary of independence. Léopoldville was renamed Kinshasa, for a village named Kinshasa that once stood near the site. Kinshasa grew rapidly under Mobutu, drawing people from across the country who came in search of their fortunes or to escape ethnic strife elsewhere, thus adding to the many ethnicities and languages already found there.
Urban history
Colonial urban planning
European urban planning began in 1881, with rigid planning principles to keep the city uncluttered and attractive. The construction of the Matadi–Léopoldville Railway began in 1890 and ended in 1911. The railway was seen as an important sign of colonial progress because it linked Léopoldville's port with the coastal city of Matadi. After its completion, prefabricated residences known as "Danish houses", imported from Belgium, were built around the station and gradually replaced the temporary tents used by early explorers, soldiers, and mercenaries. As Léopoldville became an administrative and military center, officials of the Congo Free State and later, after 1908, the Belgian Congo began settling there.
Europeans often worked as engineers, architects, carpenters, and builders, and were supported by mercenaries and trained African laborers, who were instrumental in the physical construction. By 1902, the Kintambo area was entirely occupied by European buildings. Attracted by employment and trade, residents of surrounding villages migrated to the city, where their expanding settlements gradually formed the earliest cités indigènes, which were residential areas designated for the African population.
An eight-kilometer track connected Léopoldville (commonly referred to as "Léo") and Kinshasa but was often impassable during the rainy season. Transport included bicycles, a few private cars, and dromedaries, while public transport was scarce. In 1911, colonial administrator Georges Moulaert prepared an urban plan for Léopoldville and the surrounding Kinshasa area that guided development for decades. World War I stimulated local economic activity in the Belgian Congo, which experienced relative prosperity despite being largely cut off from Europe, as motorboats and trucks increasingly replaced canoes and porterage, and by 1918, Léopoldville had seized the interest of Belgian architects who viewed it as a site for experimenting with colonial urban planning. Colonial urbanization remained tightly controlled, and in 1922 a decree mandated that large companies provide housing for their African workers, a requirement that major firms such as Huileries du Congo Belge (HCB) met by building workers' camps, while smaller enterprises often failed to comply. The existing framework, governed by the decree on "the labor contract between natives and civilized masters", proved insufficient to meet growing housing demands, which then prompted religious missions to extend loans to African residents for self-construction before becoming overwhelmed, after which a special fund was established to provide interest-free loans for house construction using locally available materials.
Segregation
Colonial authorities enforced a racially segregated urban model in which African residents were confined to separate indigenous quarters, known as cités indigènes, such as Léo I and Léo II. These zones were delineated by colonial authorities which allocated land in rudimentary grids and, lacking modern infrastructure such as sewers, were equipped only with basic sanitation facilities, typically simple pit latrines consisting of holes dug or drilled into the ground. During the 1920s, the urban growth brought the indigenous quarters into proximity with European residential areas, particularly near the Matadi–Kinshasa Railway and the Boulevard Albert 1er (now Boulevard du 30 Juin). This heightened European settlers' concerns about public health and urban hygiene, which prompted the Léopoldville Urban Committee in 1933 to establish a buffer known as the "neutral zone", which, although recommended to be 800 meters wide, was implemented at only 250 to 300 meters because of logistical constraints and exemptions granted to some Europeans living in the area. Known as Parc De Bock, now the Kinshasa Botanical Garden, this buffer was established by District Commissioner Fernand De Bock with agronomist Roeck and included the Kinshasa Zoological Garden, and served as a sanitary barrier and a leisure space for Europeans. The park also contained vegetable gardens tended by unemployed volunteers, while immediately south of the neutral zone lay the indigenous area, which encompassed key facilities such as Ndolo Airport, Kinshasa Central Market, Kinshasa General Hospital, a TSF wireless station, a golf course, a cemetery, and Camp Léopold II (now Camp Kokolo).