Author: Arsene Mbala

Scaling Horizons in Pointe-Noire Congo-Brazzaville’s Atlantic capital of industry will, for five days in early August, pivot from oil platforms to academic platforms. The fourth edition of the Gala of Bacheliers, curated by Kima Events with the support of local chambers of commerce and ministerial partners, now occupies a firm place on Pointe-Noire’s civic calendar. Its declared ambition is straightforward yet strategic: accompany freshly minted secondary-school graduates from the exhilaration of examination halls into the more complex arena of higher education and the labour market. The organisers’ choice of venues, moving from the Cercle Africain museum in 2022 to Canal…

A Coastal City as Diplomatic Metaphor For seven June days, the Atlantic-facing city of Agadir transcended its reputation as a tourism hub to become a laboratory of African leadership. From 23 to 29 June 2025, the inaugural EPIK Leaders Summer Academy gathered forty carefully selected participants from sixteen African states, together with 160 Moroccan peers observing the public sessions. The choice of venue was deliberately political. Located in the Souss-Massa region, Agadir sits at the intersection of Morocco’s southern provinces and West Africa’s commercial arteries, a geography that illustrates Rabat’s doctrine of South-South cooperation under the African Union’s Agenda 2063…

Demographic Momentum and the Policy Imperative With nearly 60 % of its population under thirty, the Republic of Congo faces a demographic surge that is as promising as it is demanding. Government white papers presented to the National Assembly in 2023 underscore the view that productive employment is “a strategic bulwark for social cohesion and national resilience” (Ministry of Planning, Brazzaville, 2023). President Denis Sassou Nguesso has repeatedly framed human-capital development as a pillar of both the national development plan and the African Union’s Agenda 2063, signalling continuity between domestic objectives and continental aspirations. Higher Education’s Skills Gap: From Diagnosis…

A Harvard-Designed Curriculum Lands in Congo-Brazzaville When Africa Global Logistics Congo disclosed on 30 June 2025 that six of its junior managers had been selected for the Aspire Leaders Program, the announcement travelled swiftly through the hallways of Brazzaville’s ministries and foreign embassies alike. The programme, conceived by professors associated with Harvard University and now administered by the Aspire Institute (Aspire Institute 2024), distils case-method pedagogy and leadership science into a compact, fully online experience for participants aged 18 to 29. That methodology, long credited for shaping decision-makers from Boston to Beijing, is now informing Congolese professionals stationed in finance,…

Contextualising Congo’s Human Capital Challenge In the geopolitical conversation on Central Africa, Congo-Brazzaville is often framed through the prism of hydrocarbons. Yet the leadership in Brazzaville has, for several years, placed equal rhetorical and financial weight on a less visible asset: the demographic dividend represented by the country’s 4.5 million inhabitants, sixty per cent of whom are under thirty (World Bank, 2023). The National Development Plan 2022-2026 explicitly calls for a “knowledge-based diversification” designed to buttress macro-economic resilience as global demand for oil enters uncertain terrain. Within that plan, the university system is identified as a strategic hinge between social…

Kingoma Socoton as a Barometer of Rural Educational Realities Seven kilometres outside Madingou, the village of Kingoma Socoton hosts a primary school that once embodied the post-independence promise of universal education. Today its cracked walls, missing doors and improvised desks evoke a different narrative. Teachers improvise lessons against a backdrop of exposed rafters, conscious that the rainy season can interrupt classes at any moment. Local administrators confirm that enrolment remains high—reflecting the national gross enrolment ratio of 103 percent (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2022)—yet effective learning time falls well below national targets. The scene encapsulates the broader tension between constitutional…

Parental diplomacy in the national education arena When the Congolese National Association of Parents of Pupils and Students convened its extraordinary general assembly in Brazzaville, the tone was unmistakably statesmanlike. Far from a mere domestic quarrel, the session chaired by Christian Grégoire Epouma framed the safeguarding of minors as a question of public credibility and international reputation. Delegates underscored that the Republic of Congo, as a signatory to both the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, stands duty-bound to offer an environment in which learning…

A flagship campus at a delicate juncture Few institutions in Central Africa carry the symbolic weight of Université Marien-Ngouabi, heir to the 1971 National University of the Congo and alma mater of much of the nation’s technocracy. Its 30,000 students and nearly 2,000 academic and administrative staff make it a bellwether for social sentiment in Brazzaville. On 26 June 2025, at the Bayardelle complex overlooking the Congo River, the inter-union college convened to review the implementation of compromises reached six months earlier. Union leaders acknowledged progress on pedagogical equipment and infrastructure but underlined that salary arrears – notably those for…

Brazzaville positions teacher professionalisation at the core of national development Inside an austere conference room overlooking the Congo River, senior officials from the Ministry of Primary, Secondary and Literacy Education sit shoulder to shoulder with representatives of the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie, UNESCO and the Agence française de développement. They are refining the annual work plan that will drive Phase III of “Apprendre”, a programme tailored to professionalising teaching practices in eight Francophone states. For Brazzaville, the outcome transcends the education sector: the government regards the initiative as a fulcrum for its new National Development Plan, which hinges on…

Academic Synergy as a Diplomatic Tool On June 19, a pivotal meeting took place in Brazzaville where Congo’s Minister of Higher Education, Pr Delphine Edith Emmanuel, and Venezuela’s Ambassador to Congo, Laura Evangelia Suárez, discussed strategic academic cooperation. This dialogue aimed at invigorating South-South cooperation within the university sector, adhering to the roadmap established during the first Congo-Venezuela Joint Commission in early 2023. A Roadmap for Enhanced Educational Exchange The conversation underscored the necessity of constructing a team of experts from both nations to implement the existing agreement on higher education. This initiative reflects a broader vision where Venezuela’s experience…