Introduction
In the streets of Kinshasa, between glass towers and luxury cars driving along flooded or dusty avenues, two urban planners and experts on Congolese urban culture offer their diagnosis, half-amused, half-lucid:
The city here is a city of Sape. We build beautiful buildings, and it gives the impression that it’s a big city, a beautiful city, but deep down, it’s nothing at all. It’s a façade to hide misery, to impress the crowd, while people are poor. It dazzles passersby. Mobutu was like that. He’s the one who left us this legacy. This is all concrete Sape.Footnote 1
We can definitely talk about Sape-ing the city with concrete. You see all those big buildings in the city? Deep down, they’re empty. There’s no law regarding land use, no urban planning, no construction regulations. Everyone does what they want, ignoring urban issues; these buildings reflect misery, selfishness, and bluff. That’s the Congolese spirit – it’s about showing off, catching the eye … It’s the same thing with our neighbour Brazzaville. We’re all Congolese.Footnote 2
In addition to highlighting the contrast that characterizes the development of Congolese cities, their analysis captures a powerful intuition: the flamboyant concrete-based constructions don’t just speak of modernity or effective social success. They also speak of lies, concealment, and the masquerading of the city and the state. They are not just about showing off the social success and modernization that concrete embodies; rather, they mimic their signs and codes. In other words, the frenzy of constructing beautiful buildings and major infrastructure in both Congos seems to be driven by more than a mere desire to express success and to create distance. It seems inhabited by a logic of camouflage, political staging and even symbolic falsification, especially in contexts such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo, marked by decades of security, political and economic crisis (Yengo Reference Yengo1998; Reference Yengo2006; Stearns Reference Stearns2012; Reference Stearns2022).
This phenomenon, which actors themselves refer to as ‘concrete Sape’, deserves to be taken seriously as a total social fact. With reference to La Sape – the Congolese elegant art of dressing where flamboyant elegance often masks daily precarity and to which we will return later – the ‘concrete Sape’ designates, in the first analysis, a mode of political action through materiality: creating the illusion of prosperity, regained stability and restored state authority where economic uncertainty, insecurity, political violence and improvisation still prevail. Concrete thus lies at the intersection of simulation – symbolically bringing about an order that does not exist – and dissimilation – hiding a reality that does exist (Braudillard Reference Braudillard2024).
This double symbolic regime – both a staging of political order and a concealment of its fragilities – remains largely overlooked in studies devoted to concrete in Africa. While concrete today stands as a central material in the production of African urban spaces (Choplin Reference Choplin2019; Reference Choplin2023), it is most often approached through its economic, aesthetic or socio-identitarian dimensions. It embodies a vector of social distinction and a receptacle of individual and collective aspirations to modernity, success and respectability (Choplin Reference Choplin2020: 178; Archambault Reference Archambault2020; Reference Archambault2024; Baloji and De Boeck Reference Baloji and De Boeck2015), with a historically rooted affective charge (Archambault Reference Archambault2018). Some research has highlighted its role in socio-spatial stratification, opposing cement construction and reed construction in the colonial era (Morton Reference Morton2019), or its function in a tripartite urban division between the ‘premium’ city reserved for elites, the ‘affordable’ city for the middle class and the ‘low-cost’ city where even precarious populations strive to build in concrete in a quest for respectability (Choplin Reference Choplin2020). However, few analyses examine concrete’s explicitly political or geopolitical uses in post-conflict contexts. This shortcoming is evident in the cases of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, two neighbouring capitals separated by the Congo River and marked by a long history of armed violence, protracted crises and unfinished state restructurings.
Kinshasa, a megalopolis of over 17 million inhabitants spread over 9,965 square kilometres, far outstrips Brazzaville, which has 2.1 million inhabitants in an area of 263.9 square kilometres. Despite this asymmetry, both cities share a post-independence history of political instability. Brazzaville has been the scene of recurrent violence, from the troubles of the 1960s to the civil wars of the 1990s and 2000s, which has exacerbated socio-spatial divisions – especially between the northern and southern parts of the city (Tonda Reference Tonda1998; Yengo Reference Yengo1998; Mankessi Reference Mankessi2023). Kinshasa, relatively stable under Mobutu’s authoritarian rule, entered a period of turbulence in the 1990s, linked to armed conflicts in eastern DRC involving regional actors (Stearns Reference Stearns2012; Reference Stearns2022; Wrong Reference Wrong2024). These conflict dynamics have had lasting impacts on both capitals: deteriorating infrastructure, disorganized urban services, withdrawal of public and private investment, and massive growth of the informal economy. These factors explain their ranking among the world’s riskiest countries for investment: in the 2024 Doing Business report (World Bank Reference Bank2023), the DRC ranked 183rd out of 183 countries, and the Republic of Congo ranked 181st, a ranking that has remained stable for over a decade (World Bank Reference Bank2007).
It is within this context of ‘endemic violence’ (Abéga Reference Abéga2003) that a spectacular real estate boom has emerged in both cities since the mid-2010s. Office towers, shopping malls, luxury villas, bank headquarters, social housing, new cities and hotel complexes are reshaping urban landscapes,Footnote 3 as evidenced by Expo-Béton, which was launched in 2016 in Kinshasa, and the Real Estate Fair, launched in 2015 in Brazzaville.Footnote 4 These constructions, often inaccessible to most of the population, suggest a performative function of concrete: they aim to project an image of restored stability, prosperity, territorial sovereignty, and social, political and economic normalcy, sending a message not only to citizens but also to donors, foreign partners and regional adversaries. The flamboyant concrete buildings currently proliferating in Congolese cities are, in a sense, urban simulacra of the state. They function as a language of power, which, through concrete-based infrastructure, seeks to ‘save face’ for the state (Goffman Reference Goffman1974).
It is this order of contrast and simulacrum that I explore through the emic notion of ‘concrete Sape’. This analytical category enables us to conceptualize the state’s staging of a failing order, which is architected in façades and manufactured by simulating and concealing its flaws in the language of luxury, height and durability – all traits that concrete claims to embody (Choplin Reference Choplin2020). ‘Concrete Sape’ thus refers to a performative apparatus through which the state attempts to symbolically restore its authority and project an image of stability, despite persistent structural fragilities. Inscribed in urban spaces deeply marked by precarity and security, economic and political crises, this aesthetic of prestige and ostentation exacerbates socio-spatial contrasts. It reflects a production of illusion, where architectural monumentality does not signal a real and achieved modernity but instead mimics its signs for primarily political purposes. Understood in this way, ‘concrete Sape’ embodies a way of making order appear in chaos, of making the image of the state shine despite the deep fissures of an economy torn apart by the turbulence of war and its aftermath. This notion articulates two seemingly unrelated but deeply intertwined aesthetic dynamics: the architectural ostentation of post-conflict power and the popular culture of La Sape, both as a staging of prestige in the midst of scarcity, economic and security instability, and violence.
I intend to offer an analysis of the phenomenon of simulacra based on the layout and configuration of buildings in the city. While the foundational works of Erving Goffman (Reference Goffman1974), Georges Balandier (Reference Balandier2006 [Reference Balandier1980]) and Achille Mbembe (Reference Mbembe2000) have thoroughly demonstrated the omnipresence of simulacra in social interactions, political performances or consumer practices, they have paid little attention to buildings as vehicles of these simulacra – preferring to focus on discursive practices, bodies, gestures and signs. Conversely, a growing literature on architecture and the materiality of power (Malaquais Reference Malaquais2002; Freschi Reference Freschi2006; Noble Reference Noble2011; Tomkinson et al. Reference Tomkinson, Mulugeta and Gallagher2022) highlights the role of buildings in the making of politics, without however fully capturing their simulacral dimension in post-crisis contexts. It is precisely to this articulation that I aim to contribute: to think of the great urban infrastructure that arose during or after war as privileged sites for the simulacrum of the state and modes of government.
By reversing AbdouMaliq Simone’s now classic formula (Reference Simone2004), my focus here is not on ‘people as infrastructure’ but rather ‘infrastructure as people’. That is, to view large concrete-based constructions not merely as urban materialities (Fontein and Smith Reference Fontein and Smith2023), but as fully fledged bodies of the city, participating in a staging of state renewal in (post-)conflict situations. In fact, these spectacular buildings operate as ‘concrete sapeurs’: they showcase shifts in the city, mimic power, display wealth, conceal the structural fragilities of the state, and simultaneously contribute to violence, exclusion and the precarious living conditions of the population. Like the sapeurs parading in working-class neighbourhoods, these buildings embody a poetics of the façade, where appearance overtakes essence, and the illusion of order and prosperity is literally constructed, block by block, concrete upon concrete, within the still open scars of war and conflicts.
My analysis is based on a composite body of empirical material. It draws first on direct observations carried out as part of a collective research project conducted from 28 to 30 November 2024 in Kinshasa, focusing on conditions of decent work on public and private construction sites, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Antwerp and the Catholic University of Congo. These observations were supplemented by exploratory trips in the cities of Kinshasa and Brazzaville between September and December 2024, particularly during two real estate-focused events: the eighth edition of Expo-Béton (9–12 September 2024) and the first edition of the Real Estate, Planning, and Investment Fair (SALIMA, 4–5 October 2024), organized under the auspices of the DRC’s Ministry of Land Planning. This fieldwork gave rise to systematic photographic documentation, developed in the now well-established perspective of visual ethnography (Lisa-Jo and Scott Reference Lisa-Jo and Scott2018; Cox and Wright Reference Cox and Wright2025), which enabled the materiality of urban forms and the aesthetic contrasts of buildings within their immediate environments to be captured. Far from serving a merely illustrative purpose, these visual materials constitute a fully fledged analytical tool for examining the gaps, discrepancies and dissonances between real estate projects and the socio-urban realities in which they are embedded.
Finally, this investigation is based on a series of formal and informal interviews conducted with taxi drivers, residents of working-class neighbourhoods, construction workers, independent architects, urban planners and engineers, drillers working on high-rise buildings, expropriated populations, residents of social housing, experts in Congolese urban culture, key private sector actors, and senior officials from the Ministries of Urban Planning and Land Management in both countries. These exchanges made it possible to contextualize the dynamics observed and to refine the understanding of the political, economic and symbolic logics at play in the phenomenon of ‘concrete Sape’ in Kinshasa and Brazzaville.
The article opens with a first section devoted to Congolese sartorial Sape, briefly tracing its history, codes and social functions. This contextual framing introduces the four subsequent sections, which explore the parallels between sartorial Sape and the real estate boom in Kinshasa and Brazzaville. The second section shows how a ‘sapological’ logic is expressed in an architecture of contrast marked by visual dissonances. The third examines the simulating and concealing functions of buildings, which mask urban fragilities while staging a post-conflict return to order directed at citizens, investors and foreign adversaries alike. The fourth and fifth sections analyse the logics of extraversion and the forms of political economy underpinning this real estate boom: they shed light on mechanisms of rent, accumulation and exclusion, as well as the various forms of symbolic, social and spatial violence that accompany this ‘concrete Sape’.
The Society of Ambiance Makers and Elegant People (Sape): historical background and characteristics
The Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes (Sape) – the Society of Ambiance Makers and Elegant People – emerged in the cities of Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa as a form of appropriation of the iconography of colonial command. Its roots can be traced back to the colonial period, when the first ‘évolués’ – ‘literate’ Africans, often employed in the colonial administration – adopted European clothing as a marker of social ascension, but also as a symbolic negotiation tool with colonial power. At its core, the Sape movement historically ‘grafted’ itself (Bayart Reference Bayart1996) onto the meanings and importance that Africans already attributed to clothing prior to colonial domination. Indeed, long before that period, clothing signified wealth in many African societies, with fabrics functioning as currency and highly valued objects. This explains the importance attached later to fabrics imported by Europeans during the transatlantic slave trade (Coquery-Vidrovitch Reference Coquery-Vidrovitch1969; Martin Reference Martin1986; Drake Moraga Reference Drake Moraga2011; Benjamin Reference Benjamin2024). La Sape is thus part of a long history of ‘extraversion’ (Bayart Reference Bayart1999), an African fascination with foreign worlds and fashion systems (Gandoulou Reference Gandoulou1984; Gondola Reference Gondola1999; Thomas Reference Thomas2003; Ayimpan and Tsambu Reference Ayimpam and Tsambu2015).
La Sape gained greater visibility during two key periods: first, in the 1950s and 1960s in Congo-Kinshasa, with the internationalization of Congolese rumba (Trapido Reference Trapido2011); and then in the 1970s and 1980s in Congo-Brazzaville, during the first oil booms that enabled the circulation of money and the construction of ‘beautiful houses’ by political and economic elites (Bazenguissa-Ganga Reference Bazenguissa-Ganga, Frelin and Haubert2021 [Reference Bazenguissa-Ganga, Frelin and Haubert1992]). This consumer elite, connected to global luxury circuits, turned each trip to Europe into an opportunity to showcase the self (Gandoulou Reference Gandoulou1984; Reference Gandoulou1989; Trapido Reference Trapido2011). In the case of Congo-Kinshasa, for example, when a musical group signed a contract in Paris or Brussels, it became an opportunity to shop at designer boutiques before returning home with suitcases overflowing with luxury brands, ready to be displayed like trophies. On the dance floors, the choreographies of these groups were designed to show off the smallest details: designer socks, the silky lining of a coat, the original label preciously preserved. Papa Wemba, the movement’s iconic figure, crowned ‘Pope of Sape’, epitomizes this dynamic (Wrong Reference Wrong2024: 170).
This brief contextualization reveals at least three fundamental elements of La Sape. The first, and perhaps most striking, is the spectacular contrast between the sapeur’s ostentatious elegance and the degraded environment in which it is displayed. This visual shock – between designer clothing and dusty streets, refinement and ruins, silky brilliance and socio-urban disorder – is the very essence of La Sape’s aesthetic, functioning as a form of aestheticization amid chaos, a way of inhabiting the ruins by summoning a spark of brilliance. Some striking images taken by photographer Tariq Zaidi illustrate this vividly: the sapeur’s radiant joy sharply contrasts with everyday frustrations, the high cost of living and widespread precarity; his impeccable appearance clashes with flooded slums, garbage in the streets, power outages and stigmatized neighbourhoods; the dazzling suit, perfectly clean, stands out amid poverty and decay (Zaidi Reference Zaidi2020). Behind every display of luxury lies a socio-economic reality marked by deprivation, injustice, infrastructural collapse and the illusion of political promises. La Sape can only be understood as an aesthetic of contrast, or an art of paradoxes and discontinuities. Above all, La Sape is oxymoronic.
The second element is based on a logic of simulation. In La Sape, clothing is a tool for creating an image of social respectability (Gondola Reference Gondola1999). In fact, La Sape is an aesthetic of bluff, a performance of the self, an ethics of self-display driven by the desire to prove to oneself and to others that one is someone, that one has something, that one is something in a world of misery, that one possesses something despite the miserable appearances from which one emerges (Gondola Reference Gondola2014; Newell Reference Newell2012; Mediavilla Reference Mediavilla2013). The sapeur’s suit is a symbolic camouflage, a way to mask social wounds, to contain suffering within the folds of fabric. The sapeur stands immaculate in a world in ruins and asserts their dignity in the midst of postcolonial collapse (Mabanckou Reference Mabanckou, Hitchcott and Thomas2014; Jorgensen Reference Jorgensen2014; Laciste Reference Laciste2022). La Sape thus forms a technology of appearance, producing a new face of reality with the aim of reinventing, revalorizing and reinserting value where social dereliction reigns (Gondola Reference Gondola2014). As Michela Wrong (Reference Wrong2024: 171) powerfully summarizes, to Sape is to ‘stand tall among the ruins’, because ‘when personal aspirations have long been stifled, sartorial elegance becomes much more than pleasure: it becomes a mission’.
The third element refers to the deep entanglement between La Sape and the dynamics of state power, which revolve around logics of extraversion, violence and exclusion. Historically, La Sape developed in contexts marked by significant social and economic exclusion (Bazenguissa-Ganga and MacGaffey Reference Bazenguissa-Ganga and MacGaffey1995; MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga Reference MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga2000), where access to imported consumer goods – the core of the sapeur’s symbolic capital – was conditioned by belonging to a racial elite under colonialism, and, later, to a political elite in postcolonial configurations. La Sape therefore emerged in environments shaped by scarcity and constraint, where the desire for sartorial distinction was intimately tied to power structures: access to certain consumer goods or international travel often required integration into clientelist networks linked to political elites (Gondola Reference Gondola1999; Trapido Reference Trapido2011). But this relationship could also be one of subversion of imposed order. Under President Mobutu in Congo-Kinshasa, for example, La Sape became an aesthetic counter-model to the standardization of authenticity in clothing – particularly the wearing of the Abacost (Wrong Reference Wrong2024: 172). Similarly, in Congo-Brazzaville, during the 1970s, La Sape functioned as a visual language of resistance against norms imposed by military regimes (Bazenguissa-Ganga Reference Bazenguissa-Ganga2011; Reference Bazenguissa-Ganga, Frelin and Haubert2021 [1992]). This links La Sape to other forms of urban performance, such as the ‘Bills’ studied by Gondola (Reference Gondola2016), the young Kinois who, through an aesthetic inspired by Hollywood Westerns, staged a provocative masculinity in response to colonial oppression. Likewise, in Alain Mabanckou’s novels (Reference Mabanckou1998; Reference Mabanckou2005; Reference Mabanckou2009; Reference Mabanckou2012), sapeur characters embody a tension between mimicry and misappropriation of Western signs. The author draws a compelling parallel between the sapeur and the Negritude writer: both reappropriate the codes of the former dominant power – whether sartorial or literary – in order to manipulate them, sublimate them, and ultimately surpass them.
La Sape is therefore a strategy of visibility and symbolic transformation, born from the ruins of the present. It creates contrast, simulates order, conceals chaos, carries violence, and turns the social space into a stage of appearance for self-revalorization. This is precisely where La Sape intersects with another form of dressing up: concrete-based urbanism, which likewise dresses up disorder, masks failure, simulates stable order, conceals the fissures of reality, hides the scars of war, and re-enacts the fantasy of a restored political order. This is what the following sections will now explore.
Modes and objects of concrete Sape: the architecture of contrast
The first characteristic of La Sape is the striking contrast between the sapeur’s bodily display of splendour and the socio-economic context in which the sapeur exists: widespread misery, massive unemployment, urban insalubrity, waste accumulation and open sewage (Lyons Reference Lyons2014). La Sape takes on its full meaning only through the discrepancy between sartorial opulence and material precarity. It is precisely this logic of tension between signs of wealth and degraded environments that can be found in the field of urban construction, particularly in the large-scale real estate projects unfolding in the Congolese capitals. Two emblematic cases illustrate this phenomenon.
The first is Kintélé, a new city located in the northern suburbs of Brazzaville. Launched in 2010 at the initiative of the Congolese government, Kintélé encompasses several flagship infrastructures: the Grand Hotel of Kintélé, an international conference centre, Denis Sassou-N’Guesso University, and a sports complex featuring a 60,000-seat Olympic stadium, a sports palace and a nautical centre. The project also includes a residential component, notably 1,000 prefabricated social housing units delivered by Israeli partners and another 5,000 planned by Italian developers since 2015.Footnote 5 However, numerous testimonies from residents indicate that these housing units are now in an advanced state of deterioration: damp walls, faded paint, general dilapidation. More fundamentally, it is the immediate environment of the sports complex that reveals a deep disconnect from the project’s original ambitions: unpaved roads, precarious housing and failing urban infrastructure.Footnote 6 This is an example of a luxury real estate complex nestled in an environment that is out of step with other realities and environments, both near and far. The mismatch is so stark that a senior official from the DRC’s Ministry of Urbanism and Housing, visiting the site, declared:
Kintélé is truly a success, everything is in place, unlike what we have here [referring to the Kitoko City project in Kinshasa]. But when you cross the viaduct leading to Kintélé, don’t look to the sides, close your eyes because what you’ll see is a disaster. Don’t look at the rest of the Kintélé municipality either. Whether it’s the roads, the streets, or the people’s housing, it’s catastrophic. And if you go even further beyond Kintélé, it’s worse!Footnote 7
In Kinshasa, the ‘Cité du Fleuve’ is situated in a nearly identical setting. Launched in 2009 on 380 hectares of reclaimed swampland along the Congo River, the project aimed to build 10,000 housing units, inspired by international urban models.Footnote 8 The developer, Robert Choudury, described the Cité as the future ‘Dubai of Kinshasa’ or ‘one of the most beautiful cities in Africa’.Footnote 9 Thanks to a public–private partnership in which the Congolese state provided the land, the project was primarily financed through off-plan sales (known as VEFA or Vente en état futur d’achèvement), allowing funds to be collected long before the housing units were completed. This financing model attracted members of the economic and cultural elite (bankers, musicians such as Fally Ipupa and Innoss’B), who rushed to buy apartments priced between US$150,000 and US$300,000. However, the current reality is far removed from the initial ambitions: delayed deliveries, abandoned construction sites, unfinished housing units, damp walls, and recurring floods due to the site’s proximity to the river (Maweja Reference Maweja2024). Only 500 of the 10,000 planned units have been completed, and the entire development is surrounded by high-precarity zones subject to frequent flooding (Figure 1). The Cité du Fleuve is thus caught in a double disconnect: on the one hand, between the promise and the realization of the project; and on the other, between the projected residential space and the social and urban environment in which it has been inserted.
Cité du Fleuve (City of the River). The contrast is visible between the rectilinear streets and the ordered houses of the Cité du Fleuve to the north-east and the mishmash of housing in the neighbouring quarters to the west.
These two examples highlight forms of contrast like those observed in sartorial Sape. In both Brazzaville and Kinshasa, such contrasts are repeated across multiple configurations. In Mpila, Ouenze and the Plateau du 15 Août in Brazzaville, flamboyant public facilities (social housing, the twin towers, shopping centres) stand next to slums, abandoned infrastructure or impassable roads (Figure 2).Footnote 10 In Kinshasa, Avenue du Cercle, despite being lined with opulent villas, becomes potholed and muddy during the rainy season (Figures 3a–c). Avenue Flamboyant hosts prestigious buildings (luxury private services), but opens directly onto a dilapidated road, often bypassed by motorists who prefer to drive along the building’s concrete sidewalks instead, paying informal per diems to opportunistic and disreputable guards (Figures 4a–d). Other buildings in the communes of Limeté, Kinshasa, and Lingwala are embedded in urban environments marked by insalubrity and insecurity (stagnant water, waste, electric cables on the ground), emphasizing the contrast between the striking concrete constructions and their surroundings (Figures 5a–f, 6a–b and 7a–d).
The twin towers of Brazzaville. Here, in the Mpila district, the two towers, built by the General Delegation for Major Works, are each topped with a panoramic restaurant. Their splendour contrasts sharply with the surrounding sheet-metal housing, often unfinished and of very low standards. Source: Author, December 2024.
A street in Cercle de Kinshasa, near Jacarandas Avenue, which houses the Embassy of Belgium. The photographs highlight the contrast between the dilapidated condition of the road and the lush character of the villas and the high-rise building. Source: Author, November 2024.
Avenue Flamboyant, Kinshasa. The photographs reveal a gap between the idea of luxury and beauty conveyed by the avenue’s name (‘flamboyant’ being associated with wealth and elegance, reflected in the high-rise building) and the reality of a neglected environment – with dilapidated, flooded, cracked and muddy streets. The neglect is such that small cars, wishing to avoid being ‘submerged’ in the pool of water in front of the luxury building, prefer to drive across its forecourt (see the wheel tracks in Figure 4d and the red car using the forecourt in Figure 4c), in exchange for a per diem paid to the disreputable guards responsible for its maintenance and constant surveillance. Source: Author, November 2024.
A neighbourhood in the Lingwala commune, Kinshasa. The photographs clearly show a muddy road with gutters filled with electrical wires. Along this road stand dilapidated houses and taller, more luxurious buildings, built and inhabited by ‘upper middle-class people’, according to a Congolese engineer from the city. Source: Author, October 2024.
Two multistorey residences in Kinshasa. The first, located in the Kinshasa commune, is surrounded by pools of water, while the second, located in the Gombe commune, faces a muddy street. Source: Author, November 2024.
Selective views of the Funa district, Limeté commune, Kinshasa. These images show how beautiful houses and multistorey buildings – built by businesspeople and politicians – stand in a setting marked by flooding, mud and waste. Source: Author, November 2024.
Future Tower, Kinshasa. This luxurious building, located on Boulevard du 30 Juin, shows clear signs of being incomplete: on the right, a cracked wall is visible, and behind the tower stands a large, unfinished building abandoned at the time of my fieldwork. Source: Author, November 2024.
A shopping centre in the Kintélé sports complex and part of the social housing in Mpila, Brazzaville. What is striking about these images is the ephemeral nature of the buildings: when they were inaugurated by President Denis Sassou-N’Guesso, these two buildings shone with elegance and beauty. Today, fewer than ten years later, they lie abandoned, overgrown with weeds, rusty and damp. Source: Author, December 2024.
Building assigned to President Sassou-N’Guesso in Kinshasa. Here, the contrast is striking between the puddles on the avenue, in which motorists sometimes find themselves ‘drowning’, and the imposing and luxurious nature of the building, which is unoccupied. Source: Author, November 2024.
These contrasts are not just about luxury versus poverty, but also about the very integrity of the flamboyant buildings themselves. Several prestigious buildings have incomplete or deteriorating façades. The Kinshasa Financial Centre, inaugurated in 2022, remains unfinished.Footnote 11 Future Tower, a building housing high-end medical and commercial services (dentistry, surgery, neonatology and the Congo Airways office, among others), features a polished main façade but cracked and unfinished sides (Figures 8a–b). The contrast is even more striking given that the workers who build these structures, as well as those who maintain them daily, live in precarious conditions, sometimes in neighbourhoods without running water, sanitation or basic infrastructure, and often in immediate proximity to the construction sites.Footnote 12
All these configurations point to the socio-spatial inequalities that characterize African cities and that have been widely discussed in numerous studies, particularly through the concept of ‘dual cities’ (Murray Reference Murray2004; Reference Murray2011; Reference Murray, Miraftab, Wilson and Salo2015; Smith Reference Smith2023). However, such analyses often remain largely dualistic, following the historical framing that contrasted ‘white cities’ and ‘black cities’ during the colonial era (Coquery-Vidrovitch Reference Coquery-Vidrovitch2006; Reference Coquery-Vidrovitch2016 [1993]; Goerg Reference Goerg, Fourchard and Olawale2003; Morton Reference Morton2019). The Congolese examples call for moving beyond this binary reading of socio-spatial and architectural inequalities in the African city. Contemporary contrasts are embedded in contiguous spaces, sometimes within the same neighbourhood, or even within the same building. This complexification of socio-spatial inequalities can be seen in the establishment of luxurious buildings in precarious environments, with the elites’ obvious indifference to local populations (Belinga Ondoua Reference Belinga Ondoua2024b).
Urban contrasts take different forms depending on the context. In Kinshasa (with its 17 million inhabitants), they are amplified by extreme density and imbalanced land use across the city’s 9,965 square kilometres: 80 per cent of the territory remains underutilized, with most of the population concentrated in the west as a result of decades of neglected urban planning, despite longstanding recommendations for eastward development since the 1960s. In Brazzaville, contrasts are less spatial than political, structured by a divide between a predominantly Mbochi and privileged north, and a marginalized Kongo south (Yengo Reference Yengo1998; Reference Yengo2006; Bazenguissa-Ganga Reference Bazenguissa-Ganga2011). Since the late 1970s, Mbochi domination over the state apparatus has led to concentrated public investment and modern infrastructures in the north, with ‘beautiful houses’ built by Mbochi presidents and elites (Bazenguissa-Ganga Reference Bazenguissa-Ganga, Frelin and Haubert2021 [Reference Bazenguissa-Ganga, Frelin and Haubert1992]), while the south remains rarely integrated into development policies.Footnote 13 This is subtly acknowledged by a Brazzaville-based architect:
Yes, in areas like Massissia [southern Brazzaville], it’s still empty. We only have the WHO [World Health Organization] headquarters. That’s because it used to be an agricultural zone. But I must admit there’s a difference in real estate development between the north (which speaks Lingala), the centre (which speaks Munukutuba), and the south (which speaks Lari). Maybe it’s also due to [state] tribalism.Footnote 14
In both cases, however, one observes a city built in ‘fragments’, where socio-spatial and architectural inequalities persist within the same space, the same city, the same territory, the same district, by tolerating luxury, flamboyant, well-appointed buildings alongside dilapidated housing and environments, with underdeveloped streets, avenues and roads that are sometimes flooded. This reality is confirmed by two architects and urban planners from Brazzaville: ‘[M]ore and more, you’ll find very beautiful houses standing in anarchic and archaic neighbourhoods.’Footnote 15
This complex co-presence of differences reflects a mechanism of assembling contradictions within the urban fabric, where ‘a real mess develops, where slums and skyscrapers intermingle’ (Lopes Reference Lopes1992: 207). In fact, concrete Sape refers to a mode of urban development where inequalities are interwoven within the same fabric, or even within the same building. City buildings now represent contiguous differentiations, mosaics of fragments in tension (McFarlane Reference McFarlane2021).
Concrete illusions: a trompe-l’oeil urbanism in the service of patriotism and performative resilience
After highlighting the contrasts that structure both sartorial Sape and real estate arrangements in Congolese cities, we now turn to another equally revealing parallel: that of the simulation and concealment that runs through both forms of staging – whether of the body or of the city. Like sartorial Sape – an art of ostentatious elegance within a context of hardship and social rupture – concrete Sape designates a form of architectural and urban simulation that masks fragile social realities and conflicting dynamics. Both Brazzaville and Kinshasa offer paradigmatic expressions of this phenomenon.
Since 1960, Congo-Brazzaville has experienced persistent political instability, marked by authoritarian regimes underpinned by ethno-regional divisions (Tonda Reference Tonda1998; Yengo Reference Yengo2006; Batoumeni Reference Batoumeni2020; Mankessi Reference Mankessi2023). In 1963, Abbé Fulbert Youlou, the country’s first president, was overthrown during the ‘Three Glorious’ – a union-led and popular uprising that opened the era of the single-party state. Marien Ngouabi took power in 1968 but was assassinated in 1977. Joachim Yhombi-Opango briefly succeeded him before being ousted in 1979 by Denis Sassou-N’Guesso, a northern Mbochi officer who relied on the army and the Marxist–Leninist Congolese Labour Party (PCT). Sassou remained in power until 1992, when a democratic transition led to the election of Pascal Lissouba, a Kongo from the south. This changeover rekindled tensions between the north (Mbochi) and the south (Kongo, Téké, Lari), leading to the civil war of 1997. Sassou returned to power with the support of northern militias (notably the Cobras). Between 1998 and 2002, Brazzaville was ravaged by intermittent conflict and massive destruction. It is in this post-conflict context that a real estate boom began in the mid-2000s, fuelled by soaring oil prices. Starting in 2009, the Congolese government embarked on a spectacular policy of rebuilding and modernizing the capital: construction of the twin towers, the Kintélé conference centre, luxury hotel complexes (often unoccupied), and social housing programmes in Mpila.Footnote 16
In the DRC, post-conflict reconstruction is taking prominent shape in Kinshasa, the main symbol of power. After Mobutu’s fall in 1997, the country was plunged into a series of wars, especially in the east, with the intervention of Rwanda, Uganda and Angola. While Kinshasa was relatively spared from combat, it received a massive influx of internally displaced and regional migrants, exacerbating a chaotic urbanization.Footnote 17 The Battle of Kinshasa in the late 1990s heavily damaged the city (De Villers and Omasombo Tshonda Reference De Villers and Omasombo Tshonda2001). Under Joseph Kabila (2001–18), the state launched the ‘Cinq chantiers’ (Five Major Works) programme and created a Ministry of Reconstruction. Infrastructure was rebuilt in Lubumbashi, Goma, and especially Kinshasa, the showcase of power.Footnote 18 Major developments emerged, such as the Congolese Cultural Centre (at 90,000 square metres, the largest in Africa) and the ‘Immeuble Intelligent’ (Intelligent Building). Continuing this trajectory, President Félix Tshisekedi launched ambitious new projects – earning him the nickname ‘Fatshi Béton’:Footnote 19 the development of malls (Kinshasa Mall, Galleria Mall), interchanges (‘sauts de mouton’), the Arena stadium, two ring roads, and the promise of Kitoko City, a new city east of the capital.
In both Brazzaville and Kinshasa, these constructions or concrete-based building projects are part of a symbolic response to contexts of war or postwar. They are primarily intended to signal a sharp break from a recent past of violence and instability. But this staging also has a geo-economic purpose: it seeks to restore confidence – that of foreign investors and international partners – in two countries that have ranked among the lowest on the World Bank’s Doing Business index since 2008. In this sense, these are efforts at simulation: to make people believe in continuity where rupture occurred, to display normalcy where precarity prevails, to insinuate political and economic stability in environments marked by deep uncertainty.
In Brazzaville, the shine of concrete and glass tends to conceal – at least on the surface – profound social inequalities, the structural shortcomings of urban governance, and the limits of an economic model heavily dependent on oil revenues. Yet, this concealment remains fragile: the sharp drop in oil prices in 2014 quickly exposed the vulnerability of this vitrification strategy, with the halt of numerous construction sites, stagnation in housing policy, and an explosion of informal self-construction. The empty Brazzaville Mall and the 1,000 social housing units in Kintélé, of which only 631 were completed, serve as telling examples. While these projects reflect a partial failure of spectacular modernization, they nevertheless embody a logic in which urban construction is primarily aimed at staging a ‘capable’ state: capable of governing, producing housing, stabilizing the territory, demonstrating renewed political order, and, above all, attracting foreign capital – Chinese, Lebanese, or from the Gulf states. This is aptly summarized by a Congolese urban planner and architect:
Today, we’re building big buildings, big banks, Marina Mall, which has four towers behind with two large underground levels, etc. All this is going to beautify the city to attract investors. All this is to say that the business climate is now favourable, that there are opportunities in Congo. It’s to say: come [and] invest here.Footnote 20
In Kinshasa, the process is more explicitly politicized. The goal is not only to attract investors but also to reassure the population and to symbolically respond to external aggressions. It’s about deterring active rebel groups active in the east of the country, reinforcing national unity, and projecting an image of resilience on the international stage. Concrete-based constructions and urban projects are thus tools of bluff (Newell Reference Newell2012) and patriotic mobilization in the face of the enemy. The official discourse makes this explicit in the case of Kitoko City new town project, which never materialized:
Through this project, we must send a message. I want the implementation of such a project to convey a message to Congolese people, to foreigners, and to the aggressor [rebel groups in the east of the country, notably the M23]. First message: we are resilient, we are a resilient people, we are not down. Debout Congolais! Second message: after forty years, DRC is now on the international stage and capable of executing major projects. So, anyone who might have thought that in DRC this doesn’t work, no, come, because we are doing it. So, we are resilient, and we are delivering a major project. Third message: it’s about making Congolese people proud. To say, ‘Look, we too are starting to do big things.’ It’s so that our brothers in the east know that following on from this project, we can replicate it, on different scales, in the eastern cities too, and across the rest of the country.Footnote 21
Thus, just like sartorial Sape, where the refinement of the body of the sapeur conceals social and political vulnerabilities, urban beautification functions here as a device of simulation. Through prestigious urban façades, ruling regimes seek to mask internal weaknesses, consolidate their legitimacy, and project an image of stability and resilience in contexts of conflict. From this perspective, monumental infrastructures and large-scale urban projects constitute ‘communicating bodies’ (Martin-Juchat Reference Martin-Juchat2020) in that, beneath their concrete and glass ornaments, they attempt to convey a restored order, presence, prosperity, a stable government and territorial control, precisely where precarity, chaos or security crises prevail. Indeed, like the sapeur’s body, the city ‘dressed’ in concrete infrastructure expresses a performative power that tends to spectacularize a modernization that is ultimately fictitious (Bloom et al. Reference Bloom, Miescher and Manuh2014).
Concrete Sape is therefore a specific language of the city and of power. It is a way of hiding something in times of crisis: hiding misery, hiding flooding, hiding drainage failures, hiding slums, hiding cracks, hiding improvised urban and economic fixes, hiding insecurity, hiding political instability, hiding conflicts, and so on. In this respect, concrete Sape belongs to a particular register of perception. As Gilles Deleuze (Reference Deleuze1983: 83–97) has shown, the relationship between perception and reality is inherently selective. Perception operates through elimination, subtraction, selection and framing of reality. Concrete Sape is a mode of perception in that its logic consists of building large infrastructures and showcasing their façades as a sign of urban modernization, as proof of the government’s ‘work’, even while the economy and the security situation remain deeply fragile. Thus, concrete Sape forms the matrix of a political economy of real estate in (post-)conflict contexts. Legitimizing power from within, marking or simulating the return to economic stability, deterring aggressors, attracting and reassuring foreign investors, warding off disorder, and maintaining the illusion of a rehabilitated developmentalist state: that is its mantra.
Hijacked concrete: hegemonic reconfigurations, rentier extraversion and urban predation
Just as sapeurs show off clothes from elsewhere to assert their singularity, capture attention and position themselves within global hierarchies, the two Congolese states deploy spectacular urban projects financed by foreign capital. But behind the overall aesthetic, political restructuring strategies are also unfolding: concrete-based urbanism is a state instrument, oriented as much towards capturing external resources (foreign investments, diplomatic alliances) as towards the internal affirmation of governmental order. Projects such as Kitoko City and Kintélé thus operate on two levels: as international showcases, but also as arenas of national rivalry, revealing struggles for influence, institutional reshufflings, and the selective redistribution of power and rents (Moser and Côté-Roy Reference Moser and Côté-Roy2021). Evidently, these configurations differ from one context to another.
In Brazzaville, Kintélé has emerged as a relatively coherent project, thanks to strong institutional centralization: entrusted to the General Delegation for Major Works (DGGT), under the Ministry of Land Planning – which itself reports directly to the presidency – the project has been carried out with the support of a few technical ministries and well-identified foreign partners. Whether it was the Israeli AB Construction for social housing, Chinese companies for sports and hotel complexes, or the French multinational Total for Denis Sassou-N’Guesso University, each actor was assigned a specific task, allowing for relatively linear implementation. This configuration is reminiscent of what was observed in Togo, where a presidential social housing project was executed under the leadership of a single ministry in partnership with a Chinese company (Katchan Reference Katchan2024).
Conversely, the Kitoko City project – which was launched in 2019 and renamed Kinshasa Kia Moana in 2024 – illustrates a strong institutional fragmentation in the DRC, marked by dispersed responsibilities, a proliferation of actors and shifting alliances. Senegalese architect Pierre Goudiaby Atepa, initially central to the project, was removed in favour of the Egyptian firm Income, revealing rivalries over resources.Footnote 22 In 2024, the Strategic Committee for the Supervision of the Kinshasa Expansion Project (CSSPEVK) was established as an attempt at pluralistic coordination. It brought together the presidency, the prime minister’s office, both old and new ministries (Urban Planning, Infrastructure, Land Development, Industry, etc.), the Kinshasa governorate, agencies inherited from the Kabila regime such as the Congolese Agency for Major Works (ACGT) and the Agency for Coordination of Conventions (APCSC), as well as newly created entities including the Housing Foundation (FONHAB) and the National Agency for Land Planning (ANAT).Footnote 23 This shift in direction was accompanied by a diversification of financial partnerships: in addition to the former Egyptian allies, Chinese, American and Belgian donors were now also being courted.Footnote 24 This fragmented configuration recalls that of Cameroon’s social housing programme, characterized by the complex cohabitation of multiple public and private actors (Belinga Ondoua Reference Belinga Ondoua2024a).
These configurations suggest two distinct forms of centralization: a rigid, hierarchical centralization in Brazzaville and a more diffuse, fluid centralization in Kinshasa. But both are part of the same political economy of the ‘belly’ (Bayart Reference Bayart2006 [Reference Bayart1989]). In Brazzaville, this economy is dominated by neopatrimonialism (Médard Reference Médard1998), embodied by the presidential clan. The Kintélé project, for example, was piloted by Jean-Pierre Bouya, nephew of President Denis Sassou-N’Guesso and Minister of Land Planning (Aménagement du territoire). In Oyo, the president’s native village, a complex of luxurious but deserted villas and hotels was built at the taxpayer’s expense, for the exclusive use of the presidential family.Footnote 25 This logic of private appropriation of public goods extends to other strategic sectors: the hotel industry, with establishments such as Hotel Elbo allocated to the late Edith Bongo, daughter of Sassou-N’Guesso; intercity transport through the Océan du Nord agency, attributed to the president’s wife; or waste management via the company Averda, controlled by Omar Denis Junior Bongo Ondimba, the president’s grandson.Footnote 26 In the DRC, the dynamic is more fragmented but similarly marked by centralization around a reconfiguring power base. After a long phase of forced cohabitation with Joseph Kabila’s networks,Footnote 27 Félix Tshisekedi gradually consolidated his position by rebuilding parliamentary majorities and redistributing state resources to loyal allies.Footnote 28 The Kitoko City project reflects this transition: the emergence of new agencies and the aforementioned ministerial rebalancing signal a desire for realignment and ‘reciprocal assimilation’ (Bayart Reference Bayart1985 [Reference Bayart1979]) of former Kabilist networks.
However, this consolidation of power should not obscure the fact that the Congolese concrete economy is profoundly ‘extraverted’ (Bayart Reference Bayart1999), following a well-known strategy of capturing international development rents (Péclard et al. Reference Péclard, Kernen and Khan-Mohammad2020). In Brazzaville, the building and major works sector is emblematic of this setup: major construction at Kintélé – including social housing, the sports complex, hotel and universities – has been financed and executed by Chinese, Israeli and French partners. Added to this is the ‘Health for All’ programme, launched in 2016 with support from the Brazilian company Asprabrazza, for the construction of twelve large and so-called ‘general hospitals’ in cities across in the country.Footnote 29 Moreover, the Lebanese diaspora, particularly groups linked to Hezbollah, plays a key economic role, especially in mall construction and other commercial infrastructure work (e.g. Leila MallFootnote 30). In addition, the Kempslikten Tower, currently under construction, is funded by Saudi partners.Footnote 31 Finally, the five main cement factories operating in the country are foreign owned: Nigerian Dangote Industries Congo, Moroccan CIMAF Congo, Diamond Cement, and Chinese FORSPAK and Société Nouvelle des Ciments du Congo (SONOCC). In the DRC, this economic extraversion of concrete operates along the same lines. Here as well, major infrastructure projects – whether housing, roads, administrative buildings or residential complexes – are largely designed, funded and implemented by foreign actors. Chinese, Turkish, Lebanese, Belgian and American capital share the construction sites, often through public–private partnerships or bilateral agreements.Footnote 32 Congolese concrete, although extracted locally, is mainly valorized by foreign companies – with quarries mostly owned by Lebanese or Chinese groups.Footnote 33 This extraverted economy does more than compensate for the absence of national capital: it serves as a vehicle for the renewal of hegemonic alliances. Indeed, these financing circuits reflect a broader restructuring of the postcolonial hegemonic bloc (Bayart Reference Bayart2006 [Reference Bayart1989]). By diversifying, international alliances are reconfiguring – without fully displacing – historical dependencies on former colonial powers (France for Congo-Brazzaville, Belgium for the DRC), while new partners increasingly contribute to the consolidation of local authoritarianisms.
One of the direct consequences of this extraverted concrete Sape is the emergence of a rentier urbanism, which Tom Goodfellow (Reference Goodfellow2017) describes as ‘skeletal’: an urbanism dominated by spectacular infrastructure with no real use, uninhabited buildings, non-functional public facilities, and vacant housing units priced beyond the reach of the middle and working classes.Footnote 34 These constructions, often reserved for carefully selected political clientele – such as military officers, celebrities, members of the presidential family and regime-aligned entrepreneurs (Bini and d’Alessandro Reference Bini and d’Alessandro2017) – reflect a logic of accumulation without any collective project. In Kinshasa, the Cité du Fleuve, the Financial Centre, the SNEL (Société nationale d’électricité) station in Ngaliema, the Lemba Yumbu water plant, and even the Mama Yemo General Hospital have been inaugurated without being completed.Footnote 35 In Brazzaville, the luxury villas and Alima Palace Hotel in Oyo, the Elbo Hotel, the Mall, social housing in Mpila, and the Kintélé sports complex are all deserted (Figures 9a–c).Footnote 36 Even personal buildings owned by prominent political figures, such as the one attributed to Denis Sassou-Nguesso in the heart of Kinshasa, exemplify this logic of skeletal accumulation (Figures 10a–b). In the words of one local informant, we are witnessing ‘a rent that is no longer a rent’Footnote 37 – a form of kleptocracy in which the enjoyment of urban heritage serves no social purpose other than to possess for the sake of possessing. This fits within a political economy of excess, driven by a widespread belief among African elites that they are rightfully entitled to inhabit prestigious urban landscapes (Van Noorloos and Kloosterboer Reference Van Noorloos and Kloosterboer2018; Côté-Roy and Moser Reference Côté-Roy and Moser2019).
Dazzling, excluding and silencing: the violence of concrete Sape
In its extraverted form, La Sape of concrete feeds a corrupt urban economy marked by excess, waste and mismanagement of public resources, all following specific political logics. But just as in La Sape of human bodies, where self-presentation emerges in a climate of marginalization and brutality, the flamboyance of Congolese cities’ real estate is also marked by silent violence, rooted in the very dynamics of its production. Behind the gleam of façades lies an entire brutal regime of construction, implantation and everyday management of concrete-based buildings – a violence that Joseph Tonda (Reference Tonda2015) has already associated with ‘dazzling’ in African societies.
This violence manifests itself first in the precarious working conditions of construction workers. In many African cities, the construction sector is generally marked by delayed or non-payment of local workers (Wuidar and Bakebek Reference Wuidar and Bakebek2022; Bakebek Reference Bakebek2024; Belinga Ondoua Reference Belinga Ondoua2024a). In Kinshasa, large construction sites are places where workers are impoverished, generally earning between 5,000 and 15,000 Congolese francs (US$1.70–US$5.30) per day and, exceptionally, US$100–US$200 per month, depending on their connections in the city that allow them to be involved in several construction projects at once.Footnote 38 They work without social protection and without protective equipment against accidents. They often lack helmets, uniforms, gloves and boots, and goggles for scrap metal workers, and when such equipment is available, it is either in poor condition and inadequate or provided to workers only during inspections by public authorities.Footnote 39 Payment issues also affect local engineers overseeing the works, who are sometimes forced to ‘nibble’ on funds or cut corners on certain studies and finishing work to ‘get by’.Footnote 40
The violence is also economic. The boom in luxury construction in both capitals relies on opaque rent circuits: income from the conflict in eastern DRC, embezzled public funds, oil rent extraction and clientelist redistribution to political and military elites. Urban planning thus is a predatory and unequal economy, where the city is built on exclusion. Added to this predatory economy is a more recent phenomenon, particularly in Brazzaville: part of the money invested in real estate also includes foreign currency hoarded for years by businessmen and politicians, suddenly injected into urban construction after the CEMAC authorities announced the rollout of new CFA franc banknotes in January 2024.Footnote 41 Fearing that their cash would become traceable or unusable, some actors quickly invested in construction, further intensifying the imbalance and opacity of the real estate market.Footnote 42 These dynamics fuel intense public resentment among the Congolese population, who feel that these buildings are the visible products of ‘dirty money’.Footnote 43 As one resident in Brazzaville said in relation to the luxurious buildings on the Plateau du 15 Août: ‘All those buildings you see, they’re from thieves – it’s stolen money, papa.’Footnote 44 In Kinshasa, an informant added: ‘There’s a real estate boom; but it’s not prosperity. It’s warlords’ money, Congolese presidents’ money and others’ [money], Lebanese, Indians who make deals with our politicians and military, embezzlers who extort public funds, and mafia businessmen.’Footnote 45
Violence is also embedded in the space itself, through physical exclusion. Some structures are physically ‘protected’ against ‘undesirable populations’ (Collignon Reference Collignon1984). This is a process of physically excluding the ‘urban outcasts’ (Wacquant Reference Wacquant2006 [Reference Wacquant2005]) who must be kept away from the glittering buildings. The Cité du Fleuve in Kinshasa is a case in point. Once at the gates of the Cité, the scenery is marked by the presence of large truck tyres placed along the ‘border’ between the Cité and the slums, probably to block the road so neighbourhood delinquents cannot invade the Cité and disturb those who live there.Footnote 46 This dispositif allows Cité residents (dressed up thanks to the government’s good favour) to drive their luxurious cars within view of the surrounding poor, giving them a chance to admire from afar what they cannot see in the city because of the tyre borders. These border tyres thus are blinkers, preventing the poor from neighbouring areas from approaching sapeurs of the Cité du Fleuve.
Violence also takes the form of the state claiming exclusive rights to manage urban roads. Under the guise of a state monopoly on roads, any citizen initiative is discouraged. Repairing a road without authorization can incur penalties. A Kinshasa taxi driver, noticing the contrast between luxury residences and the surrounding road conditions, remarked:
You know, sometimes it’s not even the people who live and invest that are the problem. It’s the state. If you pave a road without government approval, you’ll get into serious trouble. It’s not that we don’t want to do it, it’s that we’re not allowed to. So really, it’s just cruelty; they don’t care about us. They do whatever they want.Footnote 47
This situation is common in many Central African countries, including Cameroon and the two Congo, and is less frequent in West African countries, where governments often view citizen-led infrastructure initiatives more favourably (Belinga Ondoua Reference Belinga Ondoua2024b: 14–15). The difference can be explained by the authoritarian and highly centralized nature of the government in Central Africa.
Added to this symbolic violence is the more direct violence of forced displacement. Despite existing regulations (e.g. environmental impact assessments), major urban projects in both Congos often result in forced evictions with little or no fair compensation. In Kintélé, many former landowners are still waiting for promised compensation following the expropriation of their land in 2009–10.Footnote 48 In Kinshasa, the creation of Cité du Fleuve led to the violent displacement of local fishing communities (De Boeck Reference De Boeck2011). This phenomenon is part of a broader trend observed elsewhere in Africa, where prestigious infrastructure projects often involve massive evictions in the service of global capitalism (Marie Reference Marie, Frelin and Haubert2021 [Reference Marie, Frelin and Haubert1992]; Blot and Spire Reference Blot and Spire2014; Beier et al. Reference Beier, Spire and Bridonneau2021; Gastrow Reference Gastrow2020).
Although real, protests remain rare and are largely suppressed. In Kintélé, those who have been expropriated, such as the victims of the 2014 Mpila explosion who have been relocated to poor-quality housing, rarely express their discontent. This silence stems from fear of repression but also from an ambiguous loyalty to the regime. Located in the north of Congo and of Brazzaville, Kintélé lies at the ethno-spatial heart of President Denis Sassou-Nguesso’s power base. Demanding rights might be seen as a betrayal of the clan or a challenge to the president himself. The regime nurtures this symbolic interpretation by presenting Kintélé as a ‘presidential gift’, political gratitude to a population perceived as loyal, particularly for hosting the president’s headquarters during the civil war. Rejecting this ‘gift’ or criticizing its conditions would amount to publicly rejecting this political favour and breaking a tacit pact of loyalty. Thus, urban planning is an emotional tool of government, used to generate loyalty and to contain dissent (Gastrow Reference Gastrow2024). As in other parts of Central Africa (Belinga Ondoua Reference Belinga Ondoua2023), urban modernity is embedded in techno-politics, where infrastructure is a real vehicle of power and government (Pilo’ and Jaffe Reference Pilo’ and Jaffe2020). In such conditions, anger does not vanish; it is refracted through silences, rumours and ‘small discontents’ (Belinga Ondoua Reference Belinga Ondoua2024a).
Conclusion: the concrete Sape as an urban governance mechanism
Ultimately, building on the hypothesis of a parallel between sartorial Sape and forms of urban production, this article has examined the political meanings of the real estate boom in Congolese cities. It appears that the flamboyant constructions that characterize this boom share several similarities with the sartorial Sape of bodies. First, the principle of contrast is central: as in La Sape, aesthetic and social discrepancies do not stem from clear ruptures but from dissonant cohabitations between ostentatious luxury and ordinary poverty, between flamboyant concrete and degraded roads. Second, the staging of these buildings follows a logic of simulacra: they perform post-conflict stability, mimic modernity, and embody a promise of political and social order that remains largely fictitious. In this perspective, the Sape of concrete constitutes a genuine policy of ‘as if’ (Hibou Reference Hibou2006): as if the war were over, as if state authority and territorial integrity had been restored, as if the economy were thriving, as if the slums had disappeared, as if urban order had returned. Finally, like sartorial Sape, this politics of the ‘sapé city’ is inseparable from the economic, social and symbolic violence that produces and reproduces it. To ‘Sape’ the city through concrete is therefore not so much a display of political or social success as it is a simulation of it; it is a distortion of the reality of an incomplete modernity and suggests the return of an illusory political order in which urban aesthetics mask and produce exclusion, resource waste, inequality and the brutality of social and power relations.
At its core, concrete Sape embodies an ambivalent dynamic. Much like potholes, which serve as sites of slowing down, gathering and unexpected interactions (De Boeck and Baloji Reference De Boeck and Baloji2016), it simultaneously generates blockage, disillusionment and dynamism. On the one hand, it feeds discontent and the notion of misguided development: the spectacular buildings it generates nurture a sense of abandonment and despair and paint a picture of a fragmented, disconnected city structured like a ‘body without organs’ (Belinga Ondoua Reference Belinga Ondoua2024b). On the other hand, these buildings are turning points: they attract and pave the way for expectations, dreams and opportunities for investment, enrichment, rent capture and land speculation. In this sense, the concrete Sape actively contributes to the reconfiguration of cities – through discontinuous yet intensely productive logics. Like the pothole that slows down, redirects and gathers, it creates its own spheres of interaction, regimes of expectations, opportunity and even power.
Moreover, just like the legendary ‘clashes’ between Papa Wemba and Stervos Niarcos (two emblematic sapeurs) in the 1990s and 2000s, the ‘sapé’ urban space is marked by rivalry logics. This competition manifests itself in the duplication of almost identical urban projects, sometimes launched simultaneously in the two Congolese capitals: the malls of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the twin towers erected on either side of the Congo River, the ambitious new city projects of Kitoko City and Kintélé, and even the imposing signs proclaiming ‘J’aime Kin’ and ‘I love BZV’. These competitive dynamics align with the tradition of ‘competition’ inherent in neoliberal territorial development, which pushes cities to maintain a ‘healthy’ rivalry by developing strategies to make themselves more attractive.
This rivalry has troubling environmental consequences. Concrete, the flagship material of this competitive urbanism, impermeabilizes the soil, increases the risk of flooding and contributes to the artificialization of spaces, in contradiction to commitments to preserve nature (Choplin Reference Choplin2020; Archambault Reference Archambault2024: 301–2). This concrete-driven development thus directly contradicts the green rhetoric promoted by many African governments to international donors, particularly regarding the preservation of the equatorial forest, proclaimed as a ‘common good of humanity’ (Pagella Reference Pagella2022).
Finally, the logics behind concrete Sape are neither a uniquely Congolese phenomenon nor a marker of African exceptionalism. They are part of broader urban dynamics that can be observed in many regions across the world. In reality, the staging of pharaonic real estate projects that are barely designed, the rush to inaugurate unfinished developments that conceal the precarious conditions of workers, the proliferation of flashy complexes suffering from serious internal deficiencies, the misappropriation of public resources, the absurd coexistence of luxury cars and mud-drenched neighbourhoods, and the maintenance of infrastructure solely in anticipation of major events before abandoning it immediately afterwards are all features of a well-known repertoire in many African states and beyond.
It would therefore be worthwhile to compare the forms and contours of concrete Sape beyond the Congolese or African contexts, in line with the traditions of comparative urbanism (Robinson Reference Robinson2022) and historical-comparative sociology of politics (Bayart Reference Bayart2022), to understand how globalized urban practices are replayed in specific contexts, according to their own historicity and power dynamics.
Supplementary material
A French version of the article text is available at <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972025101472>.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), as part of a postdoctoral project (2024–26). I am particularly grateful to my local interlocutors for their generous sharing of primary technical and administrative documentation, and their invaluable insights. I also wish to thank my colleagues at the Institute of Development Policy (University of Antwerp), particularly Kristof Titeca and Denis Samnick, whose discussions on the Congos and political developments in the region greatly enriched my interpretation of the material. Special thanks go to Jacques Aymeric Nsangou, whose early feedback on the initial drafts offered valuable theoretical and analytical guidance, and whose encouragement was instrumental in shaping this article into a scholarly contribution. Finally, I am sincerely grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Patrick Belinga Ondoua is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp and at CERI – Sciences Po Paris. He earned his PhD at the University of Geneva with the dissertation ‘Governing discontent in Cameroon: housing policies and the construction of hegemony in Yaoundé, 2000–2020’. His work focuses on urban development and how it shapes state formation and modes of government in Central Africa.
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