Author: Congo Times

Italian Week Unites Brazzaville Italophones On 17 October 2025 the Hilton Twin Towers hotel overlooking the Congo River became, for a day, a microcosm of Mediterranean culture. The Embassy of Italy gathered seasoned professionals, scholars and students to mark the twenty-fifth edition of the worldwide Settimana della Lingua Italiana nel Mondo. Beneath chandeliers and conference microphones, Ambassador Enrico Nunziata recalled that Dante’s idiom first reached Brazzaville with missionaries and oil engineers, and that it now underpins an increasingly dense web of people-to-people exchanges. The hybrid seminar, streamed to Pointe-Noire and Rome, revolved around the theme “Italian beyond borders – opportunity,…

Brazzaville Pays Silent Tribute to a Fallen Envoy A deep hush enveloped the parade ground of the Brazzaville Gendarmerie Region as the flag-draped coffin of Marshal-of-the-Log Serge Divin Miyokidi Bazola was carried shoulder-high by an honour guard. The twenty-nine-year-old gendarme, whose body was recovered from the Obela Mpoko River in the Central African Republic on 15 October after a painstaking month-long search, became the fifth Congolese peacekeeper to lose his life in the same tragic accident. Interior and Decentralisation Minister Raymond Zéphirin Mboulou, flanked by senior parliamentary and defence officials, bowed his head before the bier, symbolically uniting the State…

Brazzaville embraces Pink October momentum Under the equatorial haze of late October, the Congolese capital joined the global movement against breast and cervical cancers with a two-day mobilisation crafted by the multisport association Lion d’Or. Led by former MP José Cyr Ebina, the initiative blended scientific dialogue and collective endurance, echoing the broader public-health priority quietly advancing within government circles. While the pink ribbon has become a familiar emblem in Brazzaville’s pharmacies and hospital corridors, this year’s edition earned particular resonance by pairing clinical expertise with the symbolism of a ten-kilometre march through the city’s freshly asphalted boulevards. Science and…

UNDP Africa leadership in Brazzaville A discreet convoy slipped into the verdant compound of the National Assembly on 28 October, carrying Matthias Zana Naab, Director of the United Nations Development Programme’s Regional Service Centre for Africa. Fresh from Addis Ababa, the Ghanaian diplomat had set one objective for his forty-eight-hour mission: reaffirm the UN agency’s commitment to the Programme Accéléré de Développement Communautaire (PADC), the flagship initiative through which the Republic of Congo intends to fast-track infrastructure and social services in its most remote districts. In a brief but cordial audience, Speaker Isidore Mvouba thanked the visitor for the “steadfast…

Rapid Police Response in N’Kayi The tranquillity of Louamba, a farming village deep in the district of Kayes, was shattered on 26 October 2025 when a father and his teenage daughter were ambushed on an earth road bordered by secondary forest. According to the preliminary account provided by local law-enforcement officials, three assailants armed with machetes allegedly emerged from the undergrowth, striking the riders repeatedly in an apparent attempt to seize their brand-new Jakarta motorbike. Alerted by a passer-by who heard the cries for help, the police station in nearby N’Kayi dispatched a patrol within minutes. Officers secured the scene,…

Historic dialogue between statisticians and industry In an airy conference hall on the banks of the Congo River, executives from the country’s major factories sat shoulder to shoulder with economists of the National Institute of Statistics (INS). The gathering, held in Brazzaville, marked the first formal exchange devoted entirely to revising two cornerstones of the national economic dashboard: the Industrial Production Index (IPI) and the Industrial Producer Price Index (IPPI). INS Director-General Stève Bertrand Mboko Ibara set the tone at the outset, underscoring that high-quality statistics are not an academic luxury, but a decisive lever for business performance and public…

A generation summoned to vigilance The lecture hall of the École de Commerce et d’Industrie du Congo was unusually hushed when, on 23 October 2025, almost 250 young women from six higher-education institutions sat down to confront a pathology too often whispered about only in private. The joint initiative of Africa Global Logistics (AGL) Congo and its subsidiary Congo Terminal transformed the annual Pink October campaign into a fully fledged pedagogical experience, tailored to the linguistic, cultural and scientific expectations of students eager to master their own health destinies (Journal de Brazza). By deliberately targeting the 18-to-25 age bracket, the…

Presidential green light for the DGSP crackdown From the grandstands of the newly inaugurated Liberté School Complex in Talangaï, President Denis Sassou Nguesso addressed journalists eager for clarity on the ongoing police raids against the so-called ‘bébés noirs’ and ‘kulunas’. Without hesitation, the Head of State acknowledged that the order had come directly from his office. “The Commander-in-Chief may designate any unit for a special operation,” he observed, insisting that the Direction générale de la sécurité publique (DGSP) is acting within a clear presidential mandate to re-establish calm in the capital. The operation, launched several weeks ago, follows a surge…

Brazzaville hosts high-stakes regional budgeting With understated protocol yet palpable determination, the 44th ordinary session of the Council of Experts of the Central African Economic Union (UEAC) opened on 27 October in the Congolese capital. Delegations from Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and Chad converged to refine the Community’s draft budget for 2026, set at a provisional CFA 85 billion—approximately USD 150.8 million. The conclave precedes the ministerial meeting of 31 October, where the final envelope will be validated, and positions Brazzaville once again at the centre of sub-regional economic diplomacy. A modest yet meaningful rise…

A multilingual tome born of global demand Published in Paris by Tropiques Littéraires and immediately released in French, English, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese, “Green Ledger” spans 380 densely documented pages. Michel Innocent Peya—an economist by training who has become one of Central Africa’s most prolific climate writers—explains that participants at successive COPs frequently asked for accessible versions of his previous essays. The present volume, he notes, “aims to leave no reader linguistically stranded while the planet’s thermometer keeps rising.” Such editorial choice underscores both the universal scope of the climate emergency and Congo-Brazzaville’s desire to speak to a plural audience.…