The list of the Democratic Republic of Congo casinos is a fairly short one. Depending upon who you believe there are either one or two in the country: something of a surprise for a country roughly the size of Western Europe. However, looking at it another way, this is a country so poor that they don’t even collect the statistics telling how poor they are: if you try to look up things like GDP and trade figures and so on they are simply blank in all of the major guides.
The list of the Democratic Republic of Congo casinos starts with the one that we do know exists: The InterContinental Kinshasa Hotel and Casino. This is the main (possibly only) western style hotel in the capital city and is the scene of a lot of the action in Michaela Wrong’s magnificent description of the country under and after Mobutu, ‘In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz’. That title itself coming from the short story/novella by Joseph Conrad, ‘Into the Heart of Darkness’. For dedicated movie buffs this is also the plot that makes up the heart of Coppola’s movie, ‘Apocalypse Now’: in fact that movie draws on two books for its basis. Conrad, with the...