Kinshasa Highway

The Kinshasa Highway is an informal name for route across the Democratic Republic of the Congo into Uganda and beyond, consisting of paved highways in some places and seasonally impassable tracks in others. The name has gained currency for the role which long-distance truck drivers played in the spread of AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. Although there is a paved road from Kinshasa to Kikwit and little beyond, and there are paved roads between Kisangani, Bukavu, Kampala and Nairobi, there has never been a paved highway across the centre of the Congo joining Kinshasa and Kikwit to Bukavu. Neither is there any coordinating authority for a 'Kinshasa Highway' or 'Autoroute de Kinshasa'.