Author: Arsene Mbala

Ceremony in Brazzaville crowns four-year odyssey The small amphitheatre of the National Institute for Research and Pedagogical Action was unusually hushed on 27 November, as officials from the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, diplomats, and relatives waited for a moment four years in the making. Under the gaze of the first counsellor at the German embassy, Vera Clemens, and the head of programmes at Goethe-Institut Kamerun, Ilka Seltmann, three Congolese scholarship holders—Ropha Prince Harmelin Baleketa, Jordy Gurvitch Bola and Monik François Tsounga Mayela—received the certificates that attest to a C1 level of German and full pedagogical accreditation. Rigorous pathway…

A Collaborative Vision Forged in the Classroom The quiet conference room of the Technical Education Ministry in Brazzaville briefly took on the air of a strategic command centre on 26 November. Delegates returning from the 2024-2025 training seminars held in the People’s Republic of China resolved to set up a permanent network connecting Congolese and Chinese experts. The stated purpose is unambiguous: to design joint initiatives in technical training, pedagogical equipment and applied research that can accompany Congo’s modernisation agenda while sustaining Beijing’s outreach policy. Gaspard Openda, representing the Ministry of Technical and Professional Education, insisted that the seminars were…

A five-year experiment closes on a high note The Programme d’Appui à la Stratégie Sectorielle de l’Éducation, better known by its French acronym PASSÉ, slipped quietly across the finish line in November 2025. Launched jointly by the Government of the Republic of Congo and UNESCO with financing from the Global Partnership for Education, the five-year envelope set out to make schools more equitable, more effective and more accountable. The final evaluation, presented in Brazzaville in early December, suggests that the targets were not only met but, in several instances, exceeded. Equity gains: bricks, water and daily meals PASSÉ’s first pillar…

Local roots, global resonance In the shaded courtyard of Lycée Sébastien Mafouta, the applause that greeted Professor Francine Ntoumi’s announcement still echoes among students. By unveiling the quarterly “Francine Ntoumi Scholarship” for girls in Première and Terminale science streams, the internationally respected microbiologist and head of the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research (FCRM) offered more than a cash prize: she projected a vision in which Congolese girls confidently occupy laboratories, engineering firms and public-health agencies. The programme, launched in October, is intentionally circumscribed to Brazzaville’s 8th arrondissement, Madibou, where FCRM has operated for over fifteen years. Yet its resonance travels…

Calm Interrupted by a Sudden Call to Strike For almost six weeks, the leafy campus of Marien-Ngouabi University had regained an atmosphere of relative serenity. The negotiation round of 6 October 2025, during which government envoys assured staff representatives that outstanding remunerations would be settled, appeared to have defused a threatened general walk-out. Lecture halls reopened, administrative counters resumed registration, and students began to prepare for mid-semester assessments. That fragile equilibrium was jolted on the afternoon of 15 November, when the inter-union college—meeting at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities—announced the launch of an unlimited strike beginning Monday 17…

Student Activism Meets Institutional Support The restless hum of preparatory meetings is already palpable in Brazzaville’s academic corridors. At the centre stands the Association Zéro Violence en Milieu Scolaire et Universitaire (Azvmsu), founded in 2022 and operational since March 2025, whose chair, Joséline Mansounga Moumossi, has set her sights on an ambitious objective: transforming the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, observed each 25 November, into a watershed moment for Congo-Brazzaville’s campuses. Mansounga Moumossi recently held extended talks with Clara Mathurine Osseté Mberi Moukietou, Executive Secretary of the Council Consultative of Women. The encounter, described by both…

A Strategic Compass for National Learning In a ceremony held on 11 November 2025 at Pefaco Hotel Maya-Maya in Brazzaville, Congolese authorities and their partners from UNESCO and the International Bureau of Education validated the country’s first Curriculum Orientation Framework, known by its French acronym COC. The manuscript, delivered to senior officials including Joseph Bizard, interim chief-of-staff to the Minister of Pre-school, Primary, Secondary Education and Literacy, crystallises years of collective reflection on how to anchor schooling in national values while opening pupils to global competencies. Mrs Marlène Omolongo, speaking on behalf of UNESCO’s representative in Congo, saluted “a shared…

Ministerial visit signals policy continuity The bustle that animated the compound of Louis Ngambio Primary School on 10 November carried a resonance far beyond the neighbourhood of Mfilou. By walking through freshly painted corridors, Minister of Pre-school, Primary, Secondary Education and Literacy Jean Luc Mouthou reminded onlookers that infrastructure remains the concrete expression of the instructions issued by President Denis Sassou Nguesso. The minister’s inspection of the newly minted public General Education College bore a dual message: the facility is officially operational, and its vocation is to anchor lower-secondary learning within the community that needs it most. Bringing classrooms closer…

Strategic Capacity Building for the Judiciary From 4 to 11 November, the commercial heart of Brazzaville hosted an intensive seminar that placed intellectual property (IP) at the core of judicial practice. Jointly convened by the Ministry of Industrial Development and Private-Sector Promotion and the Ministry of Justice, Human Rights and Promotion of Indigenous Peoples, with technical support from the African Intellectual Property Organisation (OAPI), the initiative aimed to accelerate the Republic of Congo’s alignment with continental IP standards. Fifty-five magistrates, drawn from courts of first instance and courts of appeal across the country, accepted the challenge. “A sound culture of…

Brazzaville Welcomes the Second ENIA 2.0 Cohort The vast auditorium of the École du Numérique et de l’Intelligence Artificielle reverberated with youthful excitement as, on 3 November, the management of ENIA 2.0 officially introduced more than five hundred scholarship recipients to the public. Drawn from several departments, these recent secondary-school graduates are the beneficiaries of the institute’s “Bourse Mon Avenir” programme, which covers tuition, equipment and mentoring for the next three academic years. Launched in 2022, ENIA 2.0 was conceived as a response to the scarcity of specialised training in advanced computing in the Republic of Congo. Its first intake…