DEV Community: Cedric Ongoro

From Léopoldville to Kinshasa: How Our API Tracks 500 Years of African Border Changes

Cedric Ongoro — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 03:30:06 +0000

Africa's Borders Have Stories

Every city in East and Central Africa carries layers of names. Kinshasa was Léopoldville. Kisangani was Stanleyville. Lubumbashi was Élisabethville. Before all of those, they had indigenous names in Kikongo, Kiluba, and Lokele.

These aren't just trivia — they're essential for anyone working with historical records, genealogy data, colonial-era documents, or research datasets that reference places by names that no longer exist on any map.

I built Mipaka API to solve the modern problem of location dropdowns. But it's become something more: a timeline of how African administrative boundaries evolved through pre-colonial kingdoms, colonial occupation, and independence.

47 Eras Across 7 Countries

Every country in Mipaka has a chain of historical eras — each with a name, date range, type (pre-colonial, colonial, independence, current), and notes:

GET /api/v1/countries/CD/eras/

[
  {
    "name": "Kingdom of Kongo",
    "era_type": "precolonial",
    "started": "~1390",
    "ended": "1914",
    "notes": "Central African kingdom in western Congo basin..."
  },
  {
    "name": "Congo Free State",
    "era_type": "colonial",
    "colonial_power": "belgian",
    "started": "1885",
    "ended": "1908",
    "notes": "Personal property of King Leopold II..."
  },
  {
    "name": "Belgian Congo",
    "era_type": "colonial",
    "started": "1908",
    "ended": "1960"
  },
  {
    "name": "Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville)",
    "era_type": "independence",
    "started": "1960",
    "ended": "1964"
  },
  // ... Republic of Zaire (1971-1997) ...
  {
    "name": "Democratic Republic of the Congo",
    "era_type": "current",
    "started": "1997"
  }
]

DRC alone has 11 eras — five pre-colonial kingdoms running concurrently (Kongo, Luba, Lunda, Kuba, Azande), each used to attribute city names and territories to the specific kingdom that controlled them, plus six successive administrative periods from the Congo Free State to today.

Historical Place Names

Every major city can be queried for its names across eras:

GET /api/v1/divisions/{kinshasa_id}/names/

[
  {
    "name": "Nshasa",
    "language": "Kikongo",
    "name_type": "indigenous",
    "era": "Kingdom of Kongo",
    "etymology": "Original Teke fishing village on the Congo River"
  },
  {
    "name": "Léopoldville",
    "language": "French",
    "name_type": "colonial",
    "era": "Congo Free State",
    "etymology": "Stanley's trading post, 1881"
  },
  {
    "name": "Léopoldville",
    "language": "French",
    "name_type": "colonial",
    "era": "Belgian Congo"
  }
]

Some Favorites from the Dataset

Modern Name	Colonial Name	Pre-Colonial	Country
Kinshasa	Léopoldville	Nshasa (Kikongo)	🇨🇩 DRC
Kisangani	Stanleyville	Boyoma (Lokele)	🇨🇩 DRC
Lubumbashi	Élisabethville	— (Luba territory)	🇨🇩 DRC
Kampala	Kampala	Kasozi k'Empala (Luganda)	🇺🇬 Uganda
Jinja	Ripon Falls	Jinja — "stone" (Lusoga)	🇺🇬 Uganda
Nairobi	Nairobi	Enkare Nyorobi — "cool waters" (Maasai)	🇰🇪 Kenya
Mombasa	Mombasa	Mvita — "island of war" (Swahili)	🇰🇪 Kenya
Dar es Salaam	Dar es Salaam	Mzizima — "healthy town" (Swahili)	🇹🇿 Tanzania
Kigali	Kigali	Kigali — "hill of many" (Kinyarwanda)	🇷🇼 Rwanda
Butare	Astrida	Butare (Kinyarwanda)	🇷🇼 Rwanda
Bujumbura	Usumbura	Bujumbura (Kirundi)	🇧🇮 Burundi

Congo's Six Administrative Eras

The DRC is the most dramatic example. The country's internal borders were redrawn with almost every regime change:

1910 — Congo Free State: 12 districts under Leopold's rubber terror

GET /api/v1/divisions/?country=CD&level=100&q=district

1933 — Belgian Congo: Reorganized into 6 provinces and 16 districts

GET /api/v1/divisions/?country=CD&level=100
# Returns provinces from each historical era

1966 — Post-Independence: 9 provinces (Léopoldville renamed Kinshasa)

1988 — Zaire: 11 regions under Mobutu (Shaba, Bas-Zaïre, Haut-Zaïre...)

1997 — DRC Restored: 11 provinces reverted to pre-Mobutu names

2015 — Current: Split into 26 provinces (today's structure)

All of these are queryable. You can trace how Katanga became Shaba, then went back to being split into Haut-Katanga, Lualaba, Haut-Lomami, and Tanganyika.

Uganda's Five Kingdoms

Uganda's pre-colonial history is dominated by five kingdoms that were abolished in 1967 and (mostly) restored in the 1990s as cultural institutions:

GET /api/v1/divisions/?country=UG&level=100

[
  {
    "name": "Buganda",
    "description": "Largest and most influential kingdom; 52 clans under the Kabaka. Capital at Mengo (Kampala). Abolished 1967, restored 1993. Current ruler: Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II"
  },
  {
    "name": "Bunyoro-Kitara",
    "description": "One of the oldest kingdoms in East Africa, traces origins to the Bachwezi dynasty. Capital at Hoima. Abolished 1967, restored 1993."
  },
  {
    "name": "Toro",
    "description": "Founded c. 1830 when Prince Kaboyo broke away from Bunyoro. King Oyo crowned at age 3 in 1995."
  },
  {
    "name": "Ankole",
    "description": "NOT officially restored due to Bairu vs Bahima disagreements."
  },
  {
    "name": "Busoga",
    "description": "Confederation of chieftainships. Kyabazinga title rotates among clan chiefs."
  }
]

Each kingdom is stored as a historical division (level 100) with is_active=false, complete with descriptions about their founding, abolition, and current status.

Who Uses Historical Border Data?

This isn't just an academic exercise. Real use cases:

Genealogy platforms — Birth certificates from "Élisabethville" need to map to modern Lubumbashi
Historical research — Datasets from the 1950s reference Belgian Congo districts that don't exist anymore
Government modernization — Kenya's 2010 constitution replaced 8 provinces with 47 counties; old records still reference the provinces
Education — Interactive tools showing how borders evolved
Journalism — Contextualizing place references in historical documents

The Numbers

	Count
Countries	7
Total divisions	88,000+
Historical eras	47
Historical place names	124
DRC historical divisions	117 across 6 eras
Kenya historical divisions	167 (8 provinces + 159 districts)
Uganda kingdoms	5

Try It

Try the live explorer at mipaka.dev — pick a country and explore historical eras, name changes, and division hierarchies in real time.

Léopoldville is gone from every map. But in Mipaka, you can still find it — and trace the exact moment it became Kinshasa.

Next in the Series

This is Part 3 of the Mipaka API series. Missed the earlier posts? Start with Part 1: Mipaka: A Free REST API for 100K+ Administrative Divisions Across East Africa or catch up on Part 2: Mipaka API Update: 47 Historical Eras, 124 Colonial-Era Place Names, and DRC's Complete Administrative History.

Next up:

Part 4: Building Location Dropdowns for African Apps (React + Vue tutorial)

Follow me to catch the next post!

Mipaka — every border, one API.

Mipaka API Update: 47 Historical Eras, 124 Colonial-Era Place Names, and DRC's Complete Administrative History

Cedric Ongoro — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 03:10:25 +0000

What's Changed Since Launch

In Part 1, I introduced Mipaka — a free REST API for administrative divisions across 7 East/Central African countries. The focus was the basics: cascading dropdowns, search, filtering, and historical names.

Since then, the API has grown significantly. Here's everything new.

By the Numbers

Metric	At Launch	Now
Divisions	103,194	88,000+
Countries	7	7
Historical eras	~10	47
Historical place names	~60	124
Historical divisions	0	229
Cities with coordinates	0	34 (DRC)

Why did the division count drop? Rwanda's data was resynced with corrected upstream sources, removing duplicate villages. The data is more accurate now.

47 Historical Eras

Every country now has a complete chain of eras — from pre-colonial kingdoms through colonial occupation to the present day.

GET /api/v1/eras/?country=CD

DRC alone has 7 eras:

Era	Period	Type
Kingdom of Kongo	~1390–1914	Pre-colonial
Luba Empire	~1585–1889	Pre-colonial
Congo Free State	1885–1908	Colonial (Belgian)
Belgian Congo	1908–1960	Colonial (Belgian)
Republic of the Congo	1960–1964	Independence
Democratic Republic of the Congo (First Republic)	1964–1971	Independence
Republic of Zaire	1971–1997	Independence
Democratic Republic of the Congo	1997–present	Current

Uganda has 10 eras — including 8 pre-colonial kingdoms and chiefdoms with their current rulers:

Buganda Kingdom (~1300–present) — Kabaka Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II
Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom (~1300–present) — Omukama Solomon Gafabusa Iguru I
Kingdom of Toro (~1830–present) — Omukama Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV
Kingdom of Ankole (~1500–1967) — abolished, never restored
Busoga Kingdom (~1500–present) — Kyabazinga William Wilberforce Gabula Nadiope IV

Each era carries notes, date ranges, colonial power tracking, and links to the divisions that existed during that period.

124 Historical Place Names

Major cities now have their full naming history — indigenous, colonial, and modern names mapped to specific eras and languages.

Kinshasa through the centuries:

GET /api/v1/divisions/{kinshasa_id}/names/

[
  {
    "name": "Nshasa",
    "language": "Kikongo",
    "name_type": "indigenous",
    "era_name": "Kingdom of Kongo",
    "etymology": "Named after Nshasa village on the riverbank"
  },
  {
    "name": "Léopoldville",
    "language": "French",
    "name_type": "colonial",
    "era_name": "Congo Free State",
    "etymology": "Named after King Leopold II by Henry Morton Stanley (1881)"
  },
  {
    "name": "Kinshasa",
    "language": "Lingala",
    "name_type": "official",
    "era_name": "Democratic Republic of the Congo",
    "etymology": "Restored to indigenous name at independence (1966)"
  }
]

Name coverage by country:

Country	Historical Names	Examples
DRC	31	Nshasa → Léopoldville → Kinshasa, Stanleyville → Kisangani, Élisabethville → Lubumbashi
Uganda	28	Kasozi k'Empala → Kampala, Bugiri → Port Bell, Entebbe (Luganda: "seat")
Kenya	21	Enkare Nyirobi → Nairobi, Kisumo/Kisuma → Port Florence → Kisumu
Tanzania	18	Dar es Salaam (Arabic: "Haven of Peace"), Bagamoyo (Swahili: "Lay down your heart")
Rwanda	14	Nyarugenge → Kigali, Butare → Huye
South Sudan	14	Gondokoro → Juba, Mongalla → colonial river station
Burundi	13	Usumbura → Bujumbura, Kitega → Gitega

229 Historical Divisions

Beyond current administrative boundaries, the API now includes divisions that no longer exist — searchable by country and level:

# Kenya's 8 former provinces (1963–2010)
GET /api/v1/divisions/?country=KE&level=100

# DRC's 11 provinces under Mobutu (1997–2015)
GET /api/v1/divisions/?country=CD&level=100

# South Sudan's 28 states (2015–2020 decree)
GET /api/v1/divisions/?country=SS&level=100

Level 100 is a convention used to separate historical divisions from active administrative data — they won't appear in standard queries unless you filter explicitly.

What's available:

Country	Historical Divisions	What
Kenya	167	8 provinces + 159 districts (1963/1992/2007)
DRC	117	6 eras of provinces and districts (1910–present)
South Sudan	28	28 states from 2015 presidential decree
Rwanda	12	12 prefectures (pre-2006 restructuring)
Tanzania	6	6 regions created between 2002–2016
Uganda	5	5 traditional kingdoms (abolished 1967, restored 1993)

Historical divisions use is_active=false so they don't pollute standard queries. Filter explicitly to find them.

DRC Deep Data: 325 Records Across 6 Administrative Eras

DRC got the biggest upgrade. The original API had 174 records (provinces + territories). It now has 325 records tracing how the country was divided from Leopold's 15 districts in 1910 to today's 26 provinces:

Era	Divisions	Example
1910 Districts	15	District du Katanga, District de l'Équateur
1933 Provinces	6	Province du Katanga, Province de Léopoldville
1963 Provinces	21	Nord-Katanga, Sud-Kasaï (first post-independence split)
1966 Provinces	9	Shaba (renamed from Katanga under Mobutu)
1997 Provinces	11	Katanga restored, Congo-Kinshasa
Current (2015)	26 + territories	Katanga split into Haut-Katanga, Lualaba, Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami

Plus 34 cities with coordinates — the first geo-coded data in the API.

What's Next

This data enrichment sets the foundation for features coming soon:

Coordinates for all countries — DRC is the pilot, on the roadmap expand to Kenya, Uganda, and others
GeoJSON boundaries — polygon data for map rendering
Population data — census figures tied to divisions

Try It

Try the live explorer at mipaka.dev — pick a country, drill through divisions, and see historical eras in action.

Everything above is also available on RapidAPI with a free tier, and the code is open source on GitHub — MIT licensed.

The historical data is the part of Mipaka I'm most proud of. There's nothing else like it — a structured, queryable dataset of how African cities and borders have changed across centuries. If you're a historian, genealogist, or just someone who finds African history fascinating, I'd genuinely love your contributions. The data is open source — PRs welcome.

Coming Next

This is Part 2 of the Mipaka API series. Missed the intro? Start with Part 1: Mipaka: A Free REST API for 100K+ Administrative Divisions Across East Africa.

Next up:

Part 3: From Léopoldville to Kinshasa — 500 Years of African Border Changes

Follow me to catch the next one!

Mipaka — every border, one API.

Mipaka: A Free REST API for 100K+ Administrative Divisions Across East Africa

Cedric Ongoro — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 11:00:19 +0000

The Problem Every African Developer Knows

You're building a form. It has a location dropdown. You need Kenya's 47 counties, then the constituencies under each county, then the wards.

So you do what we all do:

const counties = ["Baringo", "Bomet", "Bungoma", "Busia" /* ...43 more */];

Then the client asks: "Can you add Uganda too?" And Tanzania. And Rwanda. Each country has completely different administrative structures — counties vs regions vs provinces, wards vs sub-counties vs cells.

You end up with a mess of hardcoded arrays, outdated data, and no parent-child relationships.

I built Mipaka API to solve this.

What Is Mipaka?

Mipaka (Swahili for "boundaries") is a free REST API that gives you normalized access to administrative divisions across 7 East African countries — through a single consistent interface.

103,194 divisions across 7 countries with full parent-child hierarchies:

Country	Levels	Records
🇰🇪 Kenya	County → Constituency → Ward	1,787
🇹🇿 Tanzania	Region → District	207
🇺🇬 Uganda	Region → District → County → Sub-county → Parish → Village	83,012
🇷🇼 Rwanda	Province → District → Sector → Cell → Village	17,441
🇧🇮 Burundi	Province → Commune → Colline	491
🇨🇩 DRC	Province → Territory	174
🇸🇸 South Sudan	State → County → Payam	82

Quick Demo: Kenya Counties in 3 Lines

JavaScript

const res = await fetch(
    "https://mipaka.p.rapidapi.com/api/v1/countries/KE/top/",
  {
    headers: { "X-RapidAPI-Key": "YOUR_KEY" },
  },
);
const counties = await res.json();
console.log(counties);
// [{ name: "Baringo", level: 1, level_name: "County", children_count: 6 }, ...]

Python

import requests

url = "https://mipaka.p.rapidapi.com/api/v1/countries/KE/top/"
headers = {"X-RapidAPI-Key": "YOUR_KEY"}

counties = requests.get(url, headers=headers).json()
for c in counties:
    print(f"{c['name']} — {c['children_count']} constituencies")

Output:

Baringo — 6 constituencies
Bomet — 5 constituencies
Bungoma — 9 constituencies
Busia — 7 constituencies
...
Nairobi — 17 constituencies

Building Cascading Dropdowns

The most common use case — a location picker that cascades from country → level 1 → level 2 → etc.

// Step 1: Get all countries
const countries = await mipaka("/countries/");
// [{ code: "KE", name: "Kenya" }, { code: "UG", name: "Uganda" }, ...]

// Step 2: User picks Kenya → get counties
const counties = await mipaka("/countries/KE/top/");
// [{ id: 1, name: "Baringo" }, { id: 2, name: "Bomet" }, ...]

// Step 3: User picks Nairobi (id=7) → get constituencies
const constituencies = await mipaka("/divisions/7/children/");
// [{ id: 48, name: "Dagoretti North" }, { id: 49, name: "Dagoretti South" }, ...]

// Step 4: User picks Dagoretti North → get wards
const wards = await mipaka("/divisions/48/children/");
// [{ name: "Gatina" }, { name: "Kileleshwa" }, { name: "Kilimani" }, ...]

One API. One interface. Works the same for all 7 countries. No more maintaining separate county/district/province arrays.

Filtering & Search

The API supports rich filtering out of the box:

# All Kenyan counties
GET /api/v1/divisions/?country=KE&level=1

# Search by name across all countries
GET /api/v1/divisions/?q=kampala

# Children of a specific division
GET /api/v1/divisions/?parent=42

# Combine filters
GET /api/v1/divisions/?country=UG&level=3&q=buganda

The Bonus Feature: Historical Names

This is my favorite part. Every division can have multiple names across historical eras.

Example: What was Kinshasa called in 1923?

GET /api/v1/divisions/?name=Léopoldville&year=1923

The API carries ~60 major cities with pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence names. Perfect for:

Genealogy research — birth certificates from colonial-era cities
Historical data mapping — connecting old datasets to modern divisions
Education — exploring how borders and names evolved

Here's how four cities across four countries changed names over the centuries:

Kinshasa, DRC

Era	Name	Language	Story
Kingdom of Kongo (~1390)	Nshasa	Kikongo	Teke fishing village on the Congo River
Congo Free State (1885)	Léopoldville	French	Stanley's trading post, named after King Leopold II
DR Congo (1966)	Kinshasa	Lingala	Indigenous name restored under Mobutu's authenticité policy

Juba, South Sudan

Era	Name	Language	Story
Pre-colonial	Jubek	Bari	"Uncultivated land near the river" — Bari people's settlement
Mahdist State (1885)	Gondokoro	English	Older trading post nearby, abandoned for Juba
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1899)	Juba	Bari	British built administrative post in 1922

Bujumbura, Burundi

Era	Name	Language	Story
Kingdom of Burundi	Bujumbura	Kirundi	Indigenous name — exact meaning disputed
German East Africa (1889)	Usumbura	German	German military post on Lake Tanganyika
Independence (1962)	Bujumbura	Kirundi	Original name restored

Kampala, Uganda

Era	Name	Language	Story
Buganda Kingdom (~1300)	Kasozi k'Empala	Luganda	"Hill of impala" — Buganda royal hunting ground
Uganda Protectorate (1894)	Kampala	English	British fort on the same hill

# Query any city's full name history
GET /api/v1/divisions/{city_id}/names/

Try It Free

Try the live explorer at mipaka.dev — pick a country, drill down through divisions, and see the API responses in real time.

Mipaka is also available on RapidAPI with a generous free tier, and the code is open source on GitHub under the MIT license — contributions welcome, especially for countries with partial data (Tanzania wards, DRC territories).

Tech Stack

For those curious about the internals:

Django 4.2 + Django REST Framework — handles serialization, filtering, pagination, OpenAPI docs
PostgreSQL on Railway — 103K records with proper indexes
drf-spectacular — auto-generated Swagger/ReDoc documentation
7 management commands — one per country, idempotent syncs from pre-built JSON data

If you're building anything that needs East African location data — forms, KYC flows, delivery zones, research dashboards — give Mipaka a try. And if you have data for regions I haven't covered yet, PRs are welcome.

Coming Next

This is Part 1 of the Mipaka API series. Next up:

Part 2: What's New — 47 Historical Eras, 124 Place Names, and DRC's Six Administrative Eras

Follow me to catch the next one!

Mipaka — every border, one API.

DEV Community: Cedric Ongoro

From Léopoldville to Kinshasa: How Our API Tracks 500 Years of African Border Changes

Africa's Borders Have Stories

47 Eras Across 7 Countries

Historical Place Names

Some Favorites from the Dataset

Congo's Six Administrative Eras

Uganda's Five Kingdoms

Who Uses Historical Border Data?

The Numbers

Try It

Links

Next in the Series

Mipaka API Update: 47 Historical Eras, 124 Colonial-Era Place Names, and DRC's Complete Administrative History

What's Changed Since Launch

By the Numbers

47 Historical Eras

124 Historical Place Names

229 Historical Divisions

DRC Deep Data: 325 Records Across 6 Administrative Eras

What's Next

Try It

Links

Coming Next

Mipaka: A Free REST API for 100K+ Administrative Divisions Across East Africa

The Problem Every African Developer Knows

What Is Mipaka?

Quick Demo: Kenya Counties in 3 Lines

JavaScript

Python

Building Cascading Dropdowns

Filtering & Search

The Bonus Feature: Historical Names

Kinshasa, DRC

Juba, South Sudan

Bujumbura, Burundi

Kampala, Uganda

Try It Free

Links

Tech Stack

Coming Next