“Kinshasa is only slightly better connected to the global economy than the North Pole”

This striking quote is from a recent profile of the city in CapX.  Over at The Pudding, that observation sparked some interesting work visualizing the number of flights leaving from cities around the world each day.

Matt Daniels notes that Kinshasa, with its 13 million residents, has about 13 outbound flights each day.  That’s just slightly more than Barrow, Alaska, which has 10 daily flights for its population of 5000 people.  Conversely, over 900 flights depart from Paris each day (pop. 13 million as well).

A map of the world on a black background. It shows the routes of the 900 flights that leave Paris daily, bound for destinations all over the world. Conversely,

As shown in the graph below, Lagos also has substantially fewer flights than one might expect given its size.  In general, you’re better off predicting the number of flights from a city by looking at its economy, rather than its overall population.  New York seems to be an outlier here because it’s a primary transit point between two wealthy regions (Europe and North America).

Two bar graphs. The one on the right shows the population of various global cities, ranging from Tokyo's 35 million to Bangkok's roughly 12 million. The graph on the left shows the number of flights each day leaving those cities. In general, larger cities have more flights, but this doesn't hold true for very poor cities like Lahore or Lagos

 

4 thoughts on ““Kinshasa is only slightly better connected to the global economy than the North Pole””

  2. Wow – this seems sad. What do you think? love, mom

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    1. Well, I suppose it makes sense since there’s just not that much demand to go to Kinshasa. As a policy priority I think improving the roads is more important!

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  3. Africa in general is poorly connected. This is striking example really and shows one main issue behind African economies not growing at the pace they could and possibly should. Thanks for sharing

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