According to most technicians, the uninterrupted urbanized areas in the outskirts of the city of Kinshasa are systematically categorized as peri-urban areas. An on-site exploration of Selembao, a south-western municipality of Kinshasa, pushes us to go beyond this categorization towards the recognition of a specific kind of urbanization through a specific descriptive concept: Mboka Bilanga. The first section of this paper aims at framing the peri-urban development terminology as it has applied to the African continent. A selective and thematic literature review shows off a shared vision of peri-urban areas understood as satellite, incomplete and unstable territories, which are expected to leverage their relationship of dependence with the city centre. The following section proposes a paradigm shift outlining an alternative analytical frame for the Kinshasan urbanization: the Mboka Bilanga. Here, we assess the necessity to go beyond the urban/rural opposition in a descriptive effort to depict a general social transformation rather than a mere physiological dynamic of expansion. In the third section of this paper, examining the case of Selembao, we seek to underline very specific urbanization dynamics. The observation of the urban phenomenon of Selembao follows an interpretative framework seeking to identify the traces of urbanity through place-based solidarities. What emerges from the case study is a set of survival tactics, based on informal economic relations, pointing out a few features of what we propose to call Mboka Bilanga urbanization.