Boma, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Where Boma had 10 people in 1975, it had 7.6 in 2025, fewer than it started with.

On the UN's projection it will have 371,313 people in 2050. On the UN's projection it passes 250,000 people between 2025 and 2030.

projected (after 2025) · how sure the UN is: high moderate low

How to read this: read it left to right, 1975 to 2050, one column every five years, the height being people. Hatching marks the projected years. Below, a strip of the UN's confidence: strong colour where the census maps are recent and detailed, pale where they are not, blank where the place was not counted as a city.

How to read this: the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its 223 cities in 2025, each a dot whose area is its number of people (the largest is Kinshasa). Boma is ringed, in colour; the other cities are grey. Neighbouring countries are outlines.

In 2025, Boma covered 41 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 10 km² of it. That is 43 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 7 by 7 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 3.4 times its size, and its people have fallen by 24%.

How to read this: pale is the whole of the city's land; the stronger square inside it is what is actually built on. The three are drawn to the same scale, so a larger square really is more land, and hatching means the year is the UN's projection rather than a count.

Of every 1,000 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2025, 2 lived in Boma, which is 242,042 people.

How to read this: 1,000 squares stand for everyone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one square for every 1,000th person. Count the coloured ones and you have Boma's share; the grey remainder live somewhere else in the country.

In the world, 2025

1. 2413 Gayara Iraq242,690
2. 2414 Khajauli India242,567
3. 2417 Kannauj India242,353
4. 2419 Monclova Mexico242,237
5. 2421 Boma242,042
6. 2427 Attock Pakistan241,714
7. 2430 Tambacounda Senegal241,254
8. 2431 Ore Nigeria241,251
9. 2432 Mianwali Pakistan241,207

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2025

1. 2355 Demba248,191
2. 2360 Kipushi247,546
3. 2404 Kamituga243,261
4. 2410 Kambove242,939
5. 2421 Boma242,042
6. 2488 Mbanza-Ngungu236,056
7. 2554 Luputa230,128
8. 2728 Bumba216,429
9. 2734 Kahemba215,825

How to read this: names are in order of size, the leading number being each city's rank among all 12,138 in 2025; the bars share a scale within a list. A jump in the ranks means a city under 300,000 people, which is not given a page here.

Democratic Republic of the Congo · All the world's cities

The figures for Boma are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1975 to 2025, then projection to 2050. Projected years are drawn hatched, and the UN publishes no range of uncertainty for a city. What a city means here, how the UN measures one, and why that number can differ from the one Boma publishes about itself: how the figures here are put together.

Sources: UN WUP 2025 · Natural Earth · flag-icons. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →

Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries