Kinshasa

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is widelyconsidered the archetypical ‘predatory state’. At the national level, politicalelites rely on the state to enrich themselves. On a local level, civil servants‘fend for themselves’ in the absence of a state salary. Corruption, though, isabout much more than this – it is part of a broader structure of informalrevenue extraction, with multiple layers of accountability, negotiation andinvention. In this unique book, Titeca and Nkuku analyse these processes indetail, revealing how corruption is organised and contested in the DRC’s capitalKinshasa. Exploring a variety of ‘spaces’ within the city – from transportation-and police-services (street spaces) to businessmen and markets (market spaces)to football and bars (spaces of pleasure) – the authors shows how the variousactors navigate, contest andcircumvent this predatory environment. In doing so, the book not only sheds light on corruption andcontestation, but also on the myriad ways in which a key African capital city itselfis organised.