KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (FORMER ZAIRE)
Kinshasa is the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This largest port situated on the left riverbank of Congo (Zaire) is one of the biggest African cities on the part of the mainland located to the south from Sahara. The population of city compounds 4,2 million inhabitants.
With clearing country of colonial dependence in 1960 the city has tested the season of uncontrolled growth. Kinshasa has been based in 1881 by English pioneer Henry Norton Stanly who has named the new center of trade Leopoldville - in honor of king of Belgium Leopold II.
In the capital chemical, wood-manufacturing, mechanical engineering, metal working, textile, alimentary industries are advanced. Here there are motor and bicycles plants, ship-building and ship-repair shipyards, the enterprises of an industry of building materials. In area Malupu there is a metallurgical complex. There is an international airport.
Though Kinshasa is located on coast of the large African river in 514 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean, brisk river navigable locomotion does not reach ocean as this is interfered by the big falls below on a watercourse. Thousands of passengers of the sailing charter, arriving of deep areas of the mainland, are displanted in Kinshasa on the railway, moto- or air freight.
The downtown has quite European shape. On a background of modern buildings the cathedral church over Anna is picking out, constructed in 1919 in neo-Gothic style and surrounded with park with a complex of buildings of the same style. The perfect sight on the city and its suburbs opens from the mount Ngaliema. In the city there are a lot of hotels, the most original of which is "Okapi", consisting of one-stored small houses, united by covered galleries. In Kinshasa there is a National university and National academy of fine arts. The interest for tourists is represented by the museum of an aboriginal life.
Despite of the modern look of multistory buildings in downtown and in rich residential districts, the same problems for the city as for the majority of postcolonial cities are characteristic. Half of the inhabitants of the capital is younger 15 years old, and one third of the population lives in slums. The economic center every year involves a plenty of poor men from the other areas of the country. It leads to augmentation of quantity of those unemployed and homeless, shortage of the foodstuffs, fuses in the streets. Nevertheless, Kinshasa remains the administrative, cultural and intellectual center of the republic well-known for the impressive collections of traditional African art.
In May, 1997 the president Mobutu Sese Seko has been discharged of an authority in the result of the revolution headed by Laurent Kabila. Моbutu rules the country more than 30 years. It has renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo into Zaire in 1971. Thousands of townspeople have went to the streets of the capital to celebrate discharge from authority of Мobutu which has completely destroyed an infrastructure of the country. To return to the state the former name was one of the first decisions of Каbila on the position of the president.
