(prior to 1966, Léopoldville), the capital of the Republic of Zaire and the country’s main commercial, transportation, industrial, financial, and cultural center. The city is located on the left bank of the Congo (Zaire) River, at the point where it widens to form Stanley Pool. Population, 1.3 million (1970). The climate is subequatorial, with rainy summers and dry winters. The mean temperature in July is about 22°C and in April about 27°C; annual precipitation totals 1,359 mm. Kinshasa has been reorganized as an independent administrative unit headed by a municipal commissioner.
Founded in 1881 by the African explorer H. Stanley, the city was named Léopoldville after the Belgian king Leopold II. From 1926 to 1960 it was the administrative center of the Belgian Congo. On Jan. 4, 1959, a political demonstration in the city set off a mass movement for independence throughout the country. The city has been, successively, the capital of the independent Republic of the Congo (1960–64), of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1964–71), and of the Republic of Zaire (since 1971).
The city’s economic development has been closely bound up with its role as a key trade and transportation center. A large portion of the nation’s foreign trade passes through Kinshasa. It is also the largest river port in the Congo basin, with a cargo turnover of 1.1 million tons in 1969. A railroad connects Kinshasa (bypassing Livingstone Falls) with the seaport of Matadi on the lower course of the Congo River. There is ferry service between Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the capital of the Congo, situated on the right bank of the Congo River. Kinshasa is a highway junction and has an airport (Ndolo). Some 25 km south of the city is the international Ndjili Airport. Kinshasa is an important manufacturing center, with food-processing enterprises (slaughterhouse, soft-drinks plants, breweries) and tobacco, textile, leather, footwear, garment, chemical, pharmaceutical, metalworking, and woodworking industries. The city produces building materials, electrical appliances, motor vehicles, bicycles, and transistor radios. There are also shipyards.
Kinshasa is the site of the National University, which has the nation’s largest library, institutes and schools (teacher training, architecture, plastic arts, and construction), the National Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, the Geography Institute, the Tropical Medicine Institute, the Geological Survey and other scientific institutions, and the National Scientific Research Administration. Also found in the city are the National Company (since 1969) and several amateur theater companies, an ethnographic museum, and a zoo.