Mweka, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Count 10 people in Mweka in 1990 and the same count gives 47.6 in 2025.

On the UN's projection it will have 492,879 people in 2050. It passed 250,000 people between 2020 and 2025. The UN first counts it as a city in 1990, when it passed 50,000 people.

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 Mweka; the grey dots are the rest. The outlines around them are neighbouring countries.

In 2025, Mweka covered 18 km², and buildings, roads and other built-up land covered 3.7 km² of it. That is 13 m² of built-up land for each person, about a square 4 by 4 metres. Since 1990, its built-up land has grown by 85%, and its people are 4.8 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, 2 lived in Mweka, which is 279,312 people.

How to read this: shrink the Democratic Republic of the Congo to 1,000 people and this is what you get. The coloured squares are the ones who would live in Mweka; the grey ones are everybody else, in other cities, in towns and out in the country.

In the world, 2025

1. 2073 Kofu Japan280,212
2. 2074 Mary Turkmenistan280,172
3. 2075 Southend-on-Sea United Kingdom280,158
4. 2076 Copperfield United States279,805
5. 2079 Mweka279,312
6. 2080 Ekma India279,229
7. 2081 Salalah Oman279,161
8. 2082 Medininagar India278,795
9. 2083 Kayes Mali278,727

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2025

1. 1859 Kindu309,727
2. 1928 Fungurume298,713
3. 1973 Kasumbalesa294,623
4. 1985 Kasaji292,523
5. 2079 Mweka279,312
6. 2164 Kabinda269,115
7. 2279 Kilwa256,165
8. 2353 Lisala248,434
9. 2355 Demba248,191

How to read this: the number before each name is its place among all 12,138 cities in the world in 2025; bars are people, on one scale per list. Only cities that reach 300,000 people have a page here, so a gap in the numbers is a smaller city.

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

The figures for Mweka are the UN's own, at five-year steps: an estimate for each of 1990 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 Mweka 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