Author: Congo Times

Congo’s Special Economic Zones as Laboratories of Diversification Since President Denis Sassou-Nguesso promulgated Law 33-2018 on Special Economic Zones, Brazzaville has portrayed these enclaves as catalysts for a post-oil economy. Oyo-Ollombo, strategically located in the forest-rich Cuvette Department, has long been earmarked for an agro-forestry tilt, yet previous memoranda struggled to survive the feasibility stage. The June signing in Vienna rejuvenates that narrative, positioning the zone as a showcase where natural-capital accounting meets industrial policy. Vienna Signing Ceremony and the Architecture of the Deal On 23 June, Ministers Jean-Marc Thystère-Tchicaya and Rosalie Matondo initialled a memorandum with Karl Ernst Kirchmayer,…

An Atlantic Terminus Meets Eurasian Ambition When Congolese minister Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso and Russian deputy energy minister Pavel Sorokin exchanged pleasantries on the fringes of the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on 19 June, they discreetly confirmed what had circulated in industry circles for months: the Pointe-Noire–Loutété–Maloukou-Tréchot crude pipeline is no longer a mere memorandum. According to a Russian Energy Ministry communiqué published the following day and corroborated by the Congolese National Petroleum Company, ground-breaking is scheduled for the final quarter of 2025, with a 25-year operational horizon. The project threads together two geographies that had rarely overlapped in…

Forest Governance in the Congo Basin under International Scrutiny Few biomes capture the diplomatic imagination quite like the Congo Basin, a carbon sink second only to the Amazon. Yet the Basin is also an arena where corporate concessions and fragile institutions intersect. During the Brazzaville forum on climate initiatives and sustainable forest management, thirty participants from government, civil society, indigenous communities and the private sector scrutinised the country’s environmental stewardship. The meeting, financed by the United Kingdom with technical input from the NGO Fern, unfolded against the backdrop of fresh data suggesting that the Republic of Congo lost nearly 100,000…

A Timely Plea from the United Nations Speaking from New York in the run-up to the 27 June International Day of Micro-, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, António Guterres urged capitals to “invest in the success” of the planet’s smallest firms. The Secretary-General’s appeal, though ritual in its cadence, is laden with economic urgency. According to UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs data, MSMEs account for more than 90 per cent of global business entities and generate roughly 60 per cent of employment. In many fragile or commodity-dependent economies, they are not merely a statistical majority; they are a social…

A vanishing safety net worth sixty billion Few figures travel the corridors of development ministries this summer with the velocity of the €60 billion projected collapse in official development assistance for 2025. The number, disclosed by Agence française de développement chief executive Rémy Rioux before the French National Assembly, is not merely a budgetary artefact. It encapsulates a systemic retreat from the solidarity architecture painstakingly erected since the 1960s. According to preliminary tallies circulating in Paris and Brussels, overall aid volumes are set to contract by roughly nine percent year-on-year, an erosion unmatched since the immediate aftermath of the 2008…

A state-crafted farewell reverberating beyond mourning The vast hall of Brazzaville’s Palais des Congrès was unusually hushed on 25 June as Congolese protocol unfolded with military precision around the flag-draped coffin of Martin Mberi. President Denis Sassou N’Guesso laid a wreath, bowed, and signed the condolence book with an almost literary reflection on “a brother, a faithful friend for sixty-five years.” The scene, broadcast live by Télé Congo and echoed by regional outlets (Les Dépêches de Brazzaville, 25 June 2024), was intended to be intimate, yet it inevitably became a tableau of political communication. In a polity where symbolism often…

Owando’s Pageantry Masks a Nation’s Strategic Anxiety The military parade on 22 June in Owando unfolded with predictable pomp: impeccably pressed uniforms, precision drills and the ritual laying of a wreath at the Place de la République by Prefect Emma Henriette Berthe Bassinga. Yet the choice of the anniversary’s motto—“Serve with honour and devotion, protect and defend with rigour”—betrayed an undercurrent of urgency. Captain Misère Dieudonné Okana, commander of Defence Zone No. 4, used the occasion to warn his officers that “the profession of arms is a vocation of sacrifice.” His admonition was less rhetorical flourish than a thinly veiled…

Fragile Freedoms in a Post-COVID Political Climate The Republic of Congo’s civil society thought it had weathered the worst of the pandemic’s disruptions, only to discover that the reopening of political life did not translate into an opening of civic space. The most recent United States Department of State Human Rights Report highlights an uptick in the denial of permits for peaceful assemblies and lingering obstacles to registering associations. These findings echo the grievances voiced in Brazzaville during a capacity-building workshop convened by the Observatoire congolais des droits de l’homme, Acted and the European Union. Participants portrayed a landscape in…

A Strategic Pivot Toward Biofuel Sovereignty When Somdia, the agro-industrial arm of the French Castel conglomerate, unveils its first Congolese distillery in June 2025, officials in Brazzaville will trumpet more than just a new factory. With a rated output of fifty cubic metres a day, the Nkayi complex is designed to deliver over six million litres of anhydrous ethanol a year—outstripping the country’s current consumption estimated by the Ministry of Energy at 5.5 million litres. In a region where refined petroleum imports drain scarce foreign currency and expose governments to price shocks, the symbolism of converting local molasses into a…

A Calculated Advance into Africa’s Newest Nation When Joshua Oigara assumed the helm of Stanbic Bank Kenya & South Sudan late in 2022, he inherited what insiders describe as “the Group’s most complex market.” A decade after independence, South Sudan remains a frontier economy where 90 percent of public revenue is tethered to crude exports, security remains brittle, and the domestic currency gyrates between official and parallel‐market rates. Yet, buoyed by Standard Bank Group’s pan-African mandate and a pick-up in peace-building momentum, Oigara has quietly doubled down on Juba. The strategic intent, he told private investors in Nairobi this spring,…