Kinshasa is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is Africa’s third-largest urban area after Cairo and Lagos. The city was colonized as a trading post by Henry Morton Stanley in 1881. It hosted the 14th Francophonie Summit in October 2012.
About Kinshasa in brief
Kinshasa is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is Africa’s third-largest urban area after Cairo and Lagos. The city was colonized as a trading post by Henry Morton Stanley in 1881. It was named Léopoldville in honour of King Leopold II of the Belgians, who controlled the Congo Free State, the vast territory that is now the DRC. It hosted the 14th Francophonie Summit in October 2012. It suffered greatly from Mobutu’s excesses, mass corruption, nepotism and the civil war that led to his downfall in 2001-2019. It has recently had to fend off rioting soldiers, who were protesting the government’s failure to pay them for their failure to protect the Congolese people during the 2006-2019 civil war. The capital is also the country’s major industrial centre, processing many of the natural products from the interior of the country, such as cocoa, coffee, cocoa, cassava, and cassava beans. It also hosts the African Union Summit, which takes place every four years. The DRC is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, with many ethnicities and languages already found in the city. The population of the city-province is about 16 million, making it the world’s second-largest city after Rome and the third largest after Lagos, Nigeria. The French language is the language of government, schools, newspapers, public services, and high-end commerce. The indigenous people of the area include the Humbu and Teke, who are known as Kinois or Kinshasans.
In the 1990s, a rebel uprising began, which, by 1997, had brought down the regime of Mobu, who had been in power since 1961. The current president is Joseph Kabila, who took office in 2001. He is expected to serve a five-year term until the end of the year, at which time he will be inaugurated as president of the Republic of Congo for a second time. The country is divided into 26 provinces, with the city being one of them. The province of Kinsha is the largest in the country and has a population of more than 10 million people. The administrative boundaries of the province cover a vast area, over 90 percent of the land is rural in nature, and the urban area occupies a small but expanding section on the western side. The region was once a site of fishing and trading villages, but now it is a megacity with a population in excess of 16 million. It faces Brazzaville, the capital of the neighbouring Republic of. the Congo, which can be seen in the distance across the wide Congo River, making them the second-closest pair of capital cities after Roma and Vatican City. It became a commercial centre and grew rapidly during the colonial period. After gaining its independence on 30 June 1960, following riots in 1959, the city elected its first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, who was viewed as a threat by Western interests.
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This page is based on the article Kinshasa published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
