It has tarmac roads busy with traffic, shops selling imported goods, a music scene as prolific as any in Africa, even a swanky hotel where the doors are opened by swipecards. After all that I had seen on my journey, Kinshasa felt as if it did not even belong in the Congo.Despite these first-world trappings, Kinshasa also has the chronic problems standard to many African capitals. Most of its nine-million-strong urban population crowd into squalid squatter camps without adequate drinking water, electricity, health care or basic services. Corruption corrodes every aspect of day-to-day life, forcing its people to rely on international organisations - the UN, aid groups, donors - to prop up the failing state. But by comparison with the country's medieval hinterland, Kinshasa is centuries ahead.I found the disconnect between capital and country bewildering when I arrived by UN helicopter. And it got worse after I was met by Maurice, the local representative of my cobalt-mining contact from Lubumbashi, and whisked away in his jeep.
