Talk:Kikwit

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by MisawaSakura talk 00:38, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

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• ... that the city of Kikwit, estimated to have a population of over one million, does not yet have an electrical grid?

• Source: (My translation) The Kikwit population statistics provided by Kikwit City Hall [...] giving a cumulative total population of 1,336,992 for the entirety of Kikwit.
  (My translation) Since its creation, the city has never had electricity.

• • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Anthology of the Killer

5x expanded by Vigilantcosmicpenguin (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 53 past nominations.

— Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 00:41, 21 August 2025 (UTC).

• I will review this today. Yue🌙 23:37, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Randomly spot-checked citations 1, 18, 34–36, 44–47, and 100; no issues arose. Yue🌙 00:04, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

• @Vigilantcosmicpenguin and Yue: Reviewing for promotion and this is failing my common-sense test. First of all, the source (I checked with my own translation says "the city has never had electricity". This is not the same as not having an electric grid; is there a source that specifies the absence of a grid? The source's claim of no electricity is plainly belied by the photos in the article, which show satellite dishes and buildings with air conditioning and what very much appear to be power lines in the lead image. This is a fairly exceptional claim and needs a robust source or perhaps multiple sources. Dclemens1971 (talk) 04:20, 17 September 2025 (UTC)
  • @Dclemens1971: As the article states, electricity has been planned and tested, but not successfully implemented. It can be presumed that the visible power lines are from incomplete constructions. The Actualite.cd source makes it a bit more clear that, in 2024 (the same year the photograph was taken), electricity is not available in Kikwit. I believe this, in addition with the KAS paper, is enough sourcing to verify that the city does not have electricity. However you are correct that my phrasing of "electrical grid" is not quite the same as what the source says, so I have tweaked the article to say "supply of electricity". The same change should be applied to the hook. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 05:49, 17 September 2025 (UTC)
    • @Vigilantcosmicpenguin: I did some digging here because the statement electricity is not available in Kikwit is quite exceptional. There is evidence here (see page 24, table 2) that Kikwit has had (underpowered) gas power plants in 1980 and 2000. This map from Africa Energy indicates a thermal plant was operational in Kikwit as of 2025. A USAID report from 2019 found (p 5) that In Kikwit, only four percent of 174,000 households have access to electricity. As I'd expect in a place without reliable sources of utility electricity, Kikwit residents use generators, a point confirmed by a map based on official data sources: One significant factor contributing to Kikwit's current energy situation is the lack of an extensive power grid infrastructure. The city experiences frequent power outages and relies on small-scale diesel generators for electricity, particularly in rural areas. A 2021 interview with someone born in Kikwit commented on how generators were used and electricity would shut off at 9pm. A 1991 New York Times article describes the city as having had electrical service in the past but now relying on generators. All this indicates the source provided above that says, in translation, Since its creation, the city has never had electricity is incorrect. What I do think is uncontestable is that local power sources are insufficient to meet Kikwit's needs and that as a World Bank report (p 42) indicates, Kikwit is not on the DRC's electrical grid. It may well have its own grid that is underpowered. Moreover, if electricity is supplied via generators, it is still supplied, even if at higher cost and with less reliability. Bottom line, I think the hook needs to be rewritten. Dclemens1971 (talk) 12:16, 17 September 2025 (UTC)
      • @Dclemens1971: Thanks for doing some more thorough research. You're correct that electricity is supplied by generators, which is why I had initially chosen the phrasing of "electrical grid". It appears that Kikwit does not have a grid, even an isolated one, as the World Bank source you provided says: "Isolated grids could also suit a few additional mid-size towns such as Kikwit". Also, to clarify the statement that "Since its creation, the city has never had electricity", I believe this is referring to the creation of the city of Kikwit, which had not had city status before 1970. In any case, you're right that the hook will have to be more precise. How about:

      ALT0a: ... that plans to supply electricity to Kikwit, a city estimated to have a population of over one million, have not yet been successful?

      — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 20:29, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

      • The sources I linked above indicated power was available in the city after 1970 and may still be available today from a thermal plant in insufficient supply for local needs. To be safe I'd want to shift it to something like "... that Kikwit, a city estimated to have a population of over one million, does not yet have a reliable supply of electricity?" but that's honestly not as interesting as your initial hook. However, I'm going to leave it open to another reviewer if they want to evaluate. Any other non-electricity related hooks to throw out there? Dclemens1971 (talk) 13:39, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

@Dclemens1971 and Vigilantcosmicpenguin: Throwing some alternatives here, although I agree that the electricity angle is the best option here:

• ALT1 ... that the Congolese city of Kikwit, estimated to have a population of over one million, is only served by a single highway?
• ALT2 ... that the city of Kikwit, estimated to have a population of over one million, is not on the Democratic Republic of the Congo's national power grid?
• ALT3 ... that a 1995 Ebola outbreak in the Congolese city of Kikwit was the second major outbreak of the virus?
• ALT4 ... that in 2019, 96% of households of the Congolese city of Kikwit, estimated to have a population of over one million, lacked electricity?

Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 01:16, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I dislike ALT3 as it is mostly interesting to people interested in epidemiology, and ALT4 has too much focus on a specific statistic. I like ALT1, which is interesting for the same reason as the electricity hook. I will also suggest a similar hook:

• ALT5 ... that the city of Kikwit, estimated to have a population of over one million, has only four paved roads?

I think this is slightly more interesting than the fact that there is only one highway. I think maybe this could be a problem with WP:DYKDEFINITE, but a source from 2023 is recent enough to say there probably haven't been new roads since then. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 01:57, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

I think ALT5 is very interesting, although I can't access the Phippard source to validate the hook fact. Dclemens1971 (talk) 20:24, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

Given our recurring issues with definite hooks, it might be a good idea to include "as of 2023" in ALT5 if we end up going with that. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 20:26, 1 October 2025 (UTC)

@Vigilantcosmicpenguin: Please address the above.--Launchballer 20:10, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

Makes sense to specify the year; I think it'll still be the most interesting hook:

• ALT5a: ... that the city of Kikwit, estimated to have a population of over one million, had only four paved roads in 2023?

— Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 20:51, 11 October 2025 (UTC)

ALT5a approved - hook fact is in the article, cited and the source checks out. Other DYK criteria met as discussed above. Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:38, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

To Prep 2

GA review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Kikwit/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Vigilantcosmicpenguin (talk · contribs) 02:54, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: MisawaSakura (talk · contribs) 23:07, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Initial comments:

Intro - "an outbreak" is red. Please unlink it or start the target article

Note: notes to a foreign language wiki with no en wiki link are ok

Intro - "poor infrastructure and lacks and electrical grid" should be "poor infrastructure and lacks an electrical grid." (second and should be an)

History - "Luluabourg Conference" is red, same issue

History - "1995 Kikwit Ebola outbreak" is red, same issue

History - "governor of Kwilu" is red, same issue

History - "The city was racially segregated into the cité européenne and the cité indigène" -- anything on when this segregation policy ended?

Governance - "Établissement de Garde et d'Education de l'Etat" is red, same issue

Governance - "Serge Makongo" is red, same issue

Images are all free, no problems

Refs are good and consistently formatted.

MisawaSakura (talk) 23:22, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

I will keep the red links per WP:REDYES, as all of these subjects are probably notable enough to have articles. As for the racial segregation, I have not seen any sources mentioning when the policy ended. (I would guess that the policy may never have been officially terminated, and would simply have become obsolete when Europeans left the city.) — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 05:18, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I didn't know about red eyes. Personally I don't agree with it, but since it's a policy, ok, don't worry about them. Really nice submission. Congrats! MisawaSakura (talk) 11:13, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

@MisawaSakura: Thanks for considering this a good article, but your review is incomplete. Per WP:GAN/I#R3, a GA review must include a spotcheck of sources, in order to determine that the article is accurate to sources and that it does not contain copyright violations. You should do this before passing this article as GA. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 17:25, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

I did that where I posted "refs are good", guess I should have been more explicit. However I forgot to run it through Earwig's tool, so I just ran that and it came back "Violation unlikely". MisawaSakura (talk) 17:35, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

About the citation error

Hey vigilantcosmicpenguin, citation 125 in the current revision has some kind of cite error I can't figure out how to fix. You may want to take a look at it. Excellent work on this article, as always! —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 01:56, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks for pointing it out. (The error was that there was a space in the URL.) — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 05:28, 18 September 2025 (UTC)