Kinshasa City, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a case of an aborted urban development. Natural phenomena combined with political instability, collapse of state, and civil strife blurred further the inherited infantile urban character of colonial times to yield an urban morphogenetic crisis. In this article, we use surface and subsurface geological data in the form of several geological and hydrogeological maps, groundwater contour maps, geotechnical isopach and isohypse maps, and other illustrations that aid in the recognition of problems of pollution, accelerated erosion, and floods to highlight the geological constraints on sustainable urban planning, socio-urban setting, and human well being in this African megacity.

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