Talk:Kinshasa Highway

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This article was nominated for deletion on 2006-12-21. The result of the discussion was No consensus.

This article was nominated for deletion on 21 December 2011 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

Untitled

What is this Highway? What cities does go through? --moyogo 11:51, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This Highway seems to be a myth or a metaphor to name the group of different highways between Mombasa (Kenya) and Kinshasa (DR Congo). I could not find any reference that wasn't vague about the road. They all say it's a road crossing Central Africa, cutting through the jungle at some places.

Only [1] gives a list of countries that could be crossed by the Highway:

All along the two-lane asphalt highway - that winds from the Atlantic port of Zaire through Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and then to the Kenyan port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean - the truck towns have sprouted in the past decades.

Assuming this highway is an actual highway (if there's any) part of the Congolese Road network, or Central African network is pure delusion. But instead this is a series of roads part of different networks that have conveniently been labeled to identify a cause of the spread of HIV in Central Africa. ---moyogo 14:48, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If there was such a single highway it would span around 3,000 km (1,900 mi), if between Mombasa and Kin, and 2,000 km (1,240 mi) if between Kampala and Kin. --moyogo 14:56, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a funny one:

The Kinshasa Highway in central Africa used to be a dirt track, but it is now a modern highway, one of whose main travelers has been HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS used this highway (which runs across central Africa from the Congo's Point-Noire to Tanzania's Mombasa, via Lake Victoria, Mount Elgo, and Kitum Cave) to spread from the rain forest in about 1979 into an outbreak. If the virus had been noticed earlier, it might have been named the ‘‘Kinshasa Disease’’ to not the fact that it passed along the Kinshasa Highway during its emergence from the African forest. The paving of the Kinshasa Highway affected people on all continents and turned out to be one of the most important events of the twentieth century.

from Global Order and Global Disorder: Globalization and the Nation-State by Keith Suter.

“Tanzania’s Mombasa”... er.. Mombasa is in Kenya, at least if was last time I checked. This even claims the Highway went from Point-Noire to Mombasa. Making it span more than 3,000 km (1,900 mi). Why would a highway go to Kitum Cave? Did Preston coin the term Kinshasa Highway? --moyogo 15:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]