Author: Arsene Mbala

UNESCO Capacity-Building Initiative for 2026 Elections The quiet conference rooms of Pefaco Hotel in Brazzaville became, for three days in August 2025, a laboratory of ideas on responsible electoral journalism. In partnership with the Ministry of Communication and the National Independent Electoral Commission (CNEI), UNESCO brought together fifty women reporters from public and private outlets for an intensive workshop designed to strengthen professional standards ahead of the presidential polls of 17 and 22 March 2026. “Every electoral cycle is an opportunity to refresh the social contract,” underlined UNESCO Representative Fatoumata Barry Marega, invoking the organisation’s mandate to promote free, pluralistic…

Football fields as civic classrooms There are evenings in Brazzaville when the equatorial dusk settles over the Ornano military stadium and floodlights reveal more than just budding strikers. Throughout the first week of August, the ground became an open-air classroom where notions of discipline, fair play and collective responsibility were rehearsed alongside tactical drills. Endorsed by the Commandement des Forces de Police and inaugurated by the Minister of Technical and Vocational Education, Ghislain Thierry Maguessa Ebomé, the U13 and U20 tournament explicitly carries the slogan “Combating Juvenile Delinquency”. The wording is not ornamental. In a city where two-thirds of residents…

A Congolese Board Game as Soft-Power Vector When the Pointe-Noire start-up KB Publishing lifted the lid on Lissolo 2.0 earlier this month, seasoned observers of Central African politics immediately detected more than a simple parlour pastime. The upgraded board game, furnished with 1 200 meticulously curated questions and a Ludo-inspired map of Congo’s twelve departments, arrives at a moment when Brazzaville is seeking to widen the spectrum of its international narrative beyond hydrocarbons and timber. In that respect, the project dovetails neatly with the national cultural industries roadmap outlined in President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s programme Le Chemin d’Avenir, which lists…

A Strategic Forum for National Human Capital Five days at the beginning of August turned the Palais des Congrès in Brazzaville into a bustling agora where recent secondary-school graduates, parents and institutional partners weighed academic possibilities for the 2025–2026 cycle. The Salon de l’Information et de l’Orientation des Bacheliers, convened under the authority of Minister of Higher Education Prof. Delphine Édith Emmanuel, has become a fixed point on Congo-Brazzaville’s education calendar, mirroring similar guidance fairs in Dakar and Abidjan that seek to stem regional skills gaps (UNESCO Institute for Statistics). The stakes are high: roughly sixty-four percent of Congolese aged…

A Strategic Pivot in Congolese Social Policy When the Congolese authorities and the World Food Programme (WFP) confirmed, on 6 August in Brazzaville, the transition from the “Semences d’avenir” pilot to a full-fledged National School Feeding Programme, the announcement resonated far beyond the walls of the ministry building. It signalled a calibrated policy shift in which nutrition, education and agricultural self-reliance converge with foreign-policy considerations. In the words of WFP representative Gon Meyers, the agreement covering an initial twenty-five schools is “the first institutional bridge toward a universal scheme rooted in local value chains” (WFP, 6 August 2025). For a…

Diplomatic Marathon Behind Matoko’s Bid When Prime Minister Anatole Collinet Makosso walked into the presidential palace this week, his portfolio was less a binder than a travelogue. In less than two months, he and a compact ministerial cohort have logged thousands of miles, moving from Lomé to Lisbon, from Brasília to Bangkok, to present what Makosso calls “a Congolese offer of service to multilateralism.” The audience with President Denis Sassou Nguesso was therefore both ritual and report: a measured debrief on how Congo-Brazzaville is translating loyalty to UNESCO into votes for Firmin Édouard Matoko, a veteran of the Paris-based agency…

A decisive moment for human-capital formation The first week of August found school courtyards in Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire and eight departmental capitals humming with the controlled excitement typical of high-stakes testing. According to the Ministry of Technical and Vocational Education, 7,738 candidates—4,421 of them in the capital—were wp-signup.phped for the annual concours direct, the gateway to the country’s most sought-after institutes of technology. By seven o’clock on 6 August, sealed envelopes containing French language papers had been opened under the joint supervision of the Director of Cabinet to the Minister, Mamadou Kanté, and the President of the National Board of Examiners,…

Social Etiquette and the Grammar of Respect Among the most enduring features of everyday life in the Republic of Congo is the almost ritualised acknowledgment of social hierarchy. In urban Brazzaville as in the riverine districts of Likouala, conversation typically begins with a gesture of deference toward an elder or an interlocutor of higher status. Congolese linguist Jean-Luc Loubassou calls this practice “the grammar of respect that oils the public sphere”. Agreement, or at least the appearance of it, is prized above blunt directness, a preference that seasoned diplomats quickly learn to emulate. This attention to status neither signals servility…

A Stage for Intellectual Empowerment The marble-walled conference hall of Marien-Ngouabi University rarely resounds with such contagious enthusiasm. Yet on 31 July it became the epicentre of linguistic celebration as four undergraduates—Christ Nourra Ntsoumou-Ntounou, Bénie Riche Aimervia Elenga, Théodorat Hilary Makambala-Ndeke and Nicie Michelle Amora Mviri—garnered the laurel of Miss Mayele 2025. Conceived in 2022 by literature professor Sylvia Djouob, the competition aspires to reconnect students with the foundational pillars of French grammar, orthography and conjugation. The choice of the word mayele, which in Lingala evokes both wit and inventiveness, signals the organisers’ ambition: to turn linguistic rigour into a…

A Gathering of Minds in the Congo River Capital From 22 to 24 July 2025 the Marien Ngouabi University amphitheatre reverberated with the multilingual hum of scholars, policymakers and practitioners who converged for the maiden congress of the Congolese Society of Psychology. Presided over by Minister for Higher Education Professor Delphine Edith Emmanuel Adouki and attended by senior cabinet colleagues, the opening signalled governmental confidence in the cognitive sciences as a lever of national development. Delegations from Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and France added an unmistakable regional and trans-continental flair, confirming Brazzaville’s ambition to serve…