Heavy downpours in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa have killed around 30 people while wreaking havoc across the central African megacity.

Axar.az reports, citing AFP, after the rain poured down overnight from Friday to Saturday, rising waters devastated several outlying and impoverished suburbs of the metropolis of some 17 million people, with some residents forced to navigate the streets by canoe.

"There are many wounded who have been evacuated and for the moment we are in the 30s for the number of dead," Patricien Gongo Abakazi, Kinshasa's provincial minister of public health, noted.