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Kinshasa 2026 – How football explains Kinshasa
April 1, 2026, jubilant Kinois took to the streets to celebrate the Leopards’ victory over Jamaica in Mexico the night before, qualifying the national football team for the FIFA World Cup for the first...
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Leopoldville 1961 – ENDA: A Tale of two Campuses
February 13, 1961, the Ecole Nationale de Droit et d’Administration (ENDA) opened classes in temporary space in the Palais de Justice in Kalina. The new school was intended to address a critical...
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Kinshasa 2026 - International Women's Day
On this International Women’s Day, in Kinshasa and throughout the Congo, women will join parades through the streets of their cities, celebrating the unique contribution of Congolese women to national...
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Leopoldville 1923 – The Apollo Palace cinema
The Apollo Palace in KinshasaIn 2011 I posted this photo of the Apollo Palace Cinema in a piece about Kinshasa’s lost architectural heritage (Mar. 24, 2011). These were images of buildings which I...
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Leopoldville 1945 - Boucherie De Wever Frères
In 2018 I posted an extended piece showcasing extant, surviving Art Deco buildings in Kinshasa (Jan. 2, 2018). One of those omitted was the De Wever Frères butcher shop at the corner of Blvd du 30 Juin...
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Kinshasa 2025 – International Women’s Day
Kinshasa could not function without the small vendors, mostly women and girls, who are the face of daily markets throughout the city. Notwithstanding the spread of western-style supermarkets from Gombe...
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Leopoldville 1945 – Plan de la Ville de Léopoldville
Interpreting Kinshasa “then and now” depends on good archival material. Informed analysis also requires a bit of conjecture. Newspapers and telephone or postal directories are useful, but detailed maps...
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Leopoldville 1943 – Leisure on the River at Kinsuka
Kinsuka is a Quartier in Ngaliema Commune, situated on the rapids four kilometers downstream from the Chanic shipyards. Tradition holds that Kinsuka means, “end of town”, the furthest extension of...
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Leopoldville 1949 – Speakerine Pauline Lisanga
This International Women’s Day we remember Congolese women who pushed the boundaries of traditional roles in the years before Independence in 1960. At twenty-three, Pauline Lisanga in 1949 became the...
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Leopoldville 1945 - President Roosevelt's Memorial Service
Just before midnight on Thursday April 12, 1945, US Consul General Buell received a visit from George Housiaux, the Director of Radio Congo Belge, who informed him that President Roosevelt had died in...
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Leopoldville 1944 - Gunther Baby Grand for Sale
If you’ve followed this blog for a while you may have concluded that one of my favorite buildings in Kinshasa is the former Sedec Motors showroom at the corner of Avenues Aviateurs and Isiro opposite...
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Leopoldville 1943 - Two franc elephant
In 1942, with the economy picking up and more Congolese participating in the cash economy, the Belgian Government in Exile in London placed an order with the Philadelphia Mint for 25 million 2 franc...
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Leopoldville 1942 – US Army establishes Camp Presnell
In a previous post (May 23, 2011), I described the arrival of the U.S. Army in Leopoldville at the end of August 1942, with an assignment to upgrade Ndolo airport to handle heavy bombers in transit to...
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Elisabethville 1910 – The Cape to Cairo railroad arrives
The photos below don’t have much to do with Kinshasa, but I’ve had them for a while and think they are too interesting not to share. They show the arrival of the railway from South Africa at the Etoile...
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Leopoldville 1957 –Fish at the Zoo
One day in March 1957, my dad showed me an advertisement from the Zoo (Feb. 6, 2011) in the “Courrier d’Afrique” newspaper in Leopoldville announcing it had completed construction of some new animal...
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Leopoldville 1928 - Chanic founded on Ngaliema Bay
The Chanic shipyards by Guilherme Marques d'Oliveira (Ph: katembo.be)Among my earliest memories of Kinshasa are the sounds emanating from the Chanic shipyards; the clanging of steel, the staccato of...
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Leopoldville 1942 – Guilherme Marques helps launch Academie des Beaux-Arts
A few years ago, I posted a piece about Guilherme d’Oliveira Marques, known as the “Painter of the Congo” (May 17, 2017). It was prompted by a serendipitous find of an old photo of his house. Today, in...
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Leopoldville 1929 – Funa Club Founded
I learned to swim at the Mampeza Pool in Leopoldville Ouest, as Commune de Ngaliema was known in the mid-1950s. The pool was built in the valley of the Mampeza river opposite Camp Reisdorf (now Camp...
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Kinshasa 2021 - Sims Chapel Replica in Kwilu Province
Five years ago, I wrote about Sims Chapel in Kinshasa (May 4, 2016). Built in 1891 by Dr. Aaron Sims of the American Baptist Missionary Union, it is the oldest permanent building in the city and still...
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Leopoldville 1926 – Hotel Sica – The Mystery of the Memling
In 2011, I posted a piece about the Hotel Memling, its origins as the Hotel SICA and after 1937, a property of Belgian Airlines Sabena (Mar. 29, 2011). Recently, a colleague shared an early photo of...
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