Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup has revealed new details about its plans in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). On October 25, 2025, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with the city-province of Kinshasa to develop an urban project covering about 6,300 hectares, land that will be provided “free of charge” by the city.
According to the group’s announcement, “the project is located between the southern bank of the Congo River and the northern area of N’djili International Airport, a strategic site for the city’s expansion plan.” It aims to create a “new modern urban center” that will become a tourist destination and a symbol of Kinshasa’s progress.
The development will include residential zones, villas, apartments, hospitals, schools, shopping centers, hotels, leisure complexes, and an administrative district for ministries and government agencies.
The Vingroup project will be built in the Maluku commune, which already hosts the ongoing expansion program of the city of Kinshasa. Its content and objectives appear consistent with this larger program, which plans a new city covering 43,000 hectares about 60 kilometers from the urban center, suggesting that the Vingroup project could become one of its components.
However, the Strategic Supervision Committee for the Kinshasa City Expansion Project (CSSPEVK) is not a signatory to the October 25 memorandum, raising potential coordination and alignment challenges between the two initiatives.
Focus on clean mobility
In addition to real estate, the memorandum includes a green mobility program for Kinshasa. Through its subsidiary VinFast, founded in 2017 and specializing in electric vehicles, Vingroup plans to progressively replace about 300,000 combustion vehicles with electric ones and deploy electric buses and taxis operated via its Green and Smart Mobility (GSM) solution, already active in Vietnam.
On its official website, VinFast lists electric vehicles priced between $10,800 and $59,900, marketed in Germany, Canada, the United States, and several Asian countries.
The provincial government is expected to provide sites for installing charging infrastructure. The green mobility project is expected to cut greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality in the capital. As of October 15, 2025, Swiss firm IQAir, which monitors air quality, ranked Kinshasa among the world’s most polluted cities, with air quality considered unhealthy.
The signing of the memorandum with Kinshasa came three days after a meeting between Vingroup Vice Chairwoman Lê Thị Thu Thủy and Prime Minister Judith Suminwa Tuluka.
During the meeting, the conglomerate said it had completed the exploratory phase of its projects in the DRC, conducted an initial assessment, and was ready to move into the contractual phase under public-private partnerships. The timeline for the final agreement and the start of the urban project’s implementation has not yet been disclosed.
