Rheumatic disorders are relatively rare among internal medicine out-patients in Kinshasa. Diseases encountered most often are osteoarthrosis, gout and rheumatoid arthritis. The authors report the relative incidence of these diseases and note that sites of osteoarthrosis are predominantly axial, that the clinical pattern of rheumatoid arthritis is less severe with the absence of abarticular manifestations and that gout, in contrast, does not differ from the classical features described in the literature. These findings encourage the authors to continue their study in order to better define the clinical features of rheumatic disorders in Kinshasa and in Zaire in general.