Provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Belgian Congo became an independent country in 1960, named Republic of the Congo. By 1963, the country was organised into 21 provinces (informally called "provincettes") plus the capital city of Léopoldville, similar to the original 22 districts under colonial rule. In 1966, the 21 "provincettes" were grouped into eight provinces, and the capital city was renamed Kinshasa.
History of Kinshasa
The African population was 20,000 in 1920 and 27,000 in 1924; the European population rose from 245 in 1908 to 2521 in 1914 to 2521 in 1918. 1926, the city was elevated to capital of the Belgian Congo, replacing the town of Boma in the Congo estuary. By 1929 the city population was 48,088 including 2,766 Europeans and after a decline at the beginning of the 1930s began to rise again at the same rate. On the eve of independence in 1959 the city population was 300,000 including 25,000 Europeans.
The original layout of the city was segregated between African and European, with a “no man’s land” in between. As the city grew this in-between area became the commercial district. The city was formally redesigned in the 1930s with stricter rules for segregation and a bigger central area. A new central market for both races, as well as a golf club, a park, and a botanical garden for whites, were developed as part of the new "cordon sanitaire" dividing (not altogether effectively) the neighborhoods by race. Additional segregated master plans, proposed in Brussels and locally in the 1950s, were never implemented.