Gemena, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Count 10 people in Gemena in 1975 and the same count gives 22.4 in 2025.

On the UN's projection it will have 614,663 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 1990 and 1995.

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: every dot is one of the 223 cities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2025, and a dot's area is how many people live there, the biggest being Kinshasa. The ringed dot in colour is Gemena; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.

In 2025, Gemena covered 37 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 7.5 km² of it. That is 17 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 4 by 4 metres. Since 1975, its built-up land has grown to 2.2 times its size, and its people are 2.2 times as many.

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, 4 lived in Gemena, which is 440,327 people.

How to read this: 1,000 squares, one for every 1,000th person in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; the coloured squares live in Gemena. The grey rest live in other cities, in towns or in the countryside.

In the world, 2025

1. 1263 Toyohashi Japan441,665
2. 1264 Chief Albert Luthuli Park South Africa441,204
3. 1265 Zhanjiang China440,587
4. 1266 Manizales Colombia440,407
5. 1267 Gemena440,327
6. 1268 Maragha Egypt440,011
7. 1269 Tallinn Estonia439,526
8. 1270 Dindigul India438,809
9. 1271 Quelimane Mozambique438,554

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2025

1. 1003 Kikwit549,102
2. 1072 Manono517,304
3. 1224 Butembo454,857
4. 1244 Kolwezi446,709
5. 1267 Gemena440,327
6. 1291 Mbandaka432,976
7. 1349 Uvira416,523
8. 1375 Kongolo410,371
9. 1471 Malemba-Nkulu386,790

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 Gemena 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 Gemena 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