Author: Congo Times

A discreet arrival with ambitious scope The morning of 21 October saw fifty young Congolese, clipboards in hand, fan out from Brazzaville’s waterfront taxi ranks to remote districts of Sangha and Niari. Their employer, the Russian non-governmental organisation Globus, prefers to let results speak before grand announcements, but the scale of this first nationwide survey has already drawn the attention of municipal chiefs and local media. According to the project coordinator, Koud Etokabeka, the mission is straightforward yet demanding: “capture the real, lived priorities of households so that every future intervention is anchored in verified data.” Globus’ presence in Central…

A discreet decision with strategic overtones On 12 December 2024, behind the marble façades of the Central African Banking Commission’s headquarters in Libreville, a short decision quietly reshuffled the regional industrial hierarchy. By inscribing Manufacture Bâtiments et Travaux Publics on the exclusive roster of “enterprises of grand standing and of national importance” for the 2025 fiscal year, COBAC placed a Congolese construction group alongside petroleum majors, telecom heavyweights and milling champions that collectively account for a sizeable share of gross domestic product in the six-nation CEMAC bloc (COBAC communiqué, 2024). Congo’s lone BTP standard-bearer Among the forty firms selected, eight…

Nationwide workshop series culminates in Sangha The forested town of Ouesso, administrative centre of the northern Sangha department, has just hosted the final leg of an ambitious government initiative to standardise public procurement practices across Congo-Brazzaville. After earlier sessions in Pointe-Noire and Brazzaville, the three-day gathering brought together members of the Public Procurement Management Cells, or CGMPs, from five departments, municipal officials from Ouesso, Pokola, Impfondo and Oyo, as well as technical staff from the General Directorate for Public Procurement Control. Their shared brief: translate recent reforms of the public contracting code into harmonised day-to-day routines. Strengthening the legal backbone…

A One-Stop Shop for Registration Not long ago, founding even a modest bakery in Congo-Brazzaville required a stamina more often associated with marathon runners than with bakers. Multiple ministries, security clearances and overlapping fees slowed ambitions to a near halt. The Agence Congolaise pour la Création des Entreprises is designed to consign that experience to the past. Created under Law 16-2017 and placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and Handicrafts led by Minister Jacqueline Lydia Mikolo, the ACPCE centralises every legal formality in a single front office located on Avenue Émile Biayenda in Brazzaville,…

A Cross-Continental Encounter At first glance the lanes of Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, a quiet suburb of Tours, appear a world away from the thrumming streets of Brazzaville’s Bacongo district where rumba cafés keep rhythm until dawn. Yet it is precisely in this unlikely setting that Congolese vocalist and composer Djoson Philosophe has elected to record the video of his new single, “Rumba mokili mobimba”. On 21 October the artist entered the analogue-leaning studio of producer Cyril Solnais, accompanied by reggae ensemble The Ligerians, to give physical shape to a collaboration that has been germinating since the 2023 edition of the Panafrican Music…

Climate Urgency Dominates African Statements Cameroon’s Minister of External Relations, Lejeune Mbella Mbella, opened his address to the 77th United Nations General Assembly by recalling the stark deadlines embedded in the Paris Agreement and by cautioning that implementation rules remain unfinished. Speaking less than two months before COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, he described the forthcoming summit as “crucial” and warned that without decisive measures “the fate of humankind is at stake”. The Cameroonian diplomat framed the climate issue not as an environmental abstraction but as an existential economic question for developing nations already devastated by droughts, floods and coastal erosion.…

Paradox of Abundance in Kouilou District The southern corridor that runs from Pointe-Noire to the Kouilou lagoon is lined with the sinews of the Congolese hydrocarbons industry: pipelines snake behind mango orchards, a 487-megawatt gas-to-power plant flickers at night, and transmission lines trace the skyline. Yet, in settlements such as Tchicanou and Bondi, the domestic switch remains stubbornly off. Residents like Florent Makosso, sixty-eight, describe the night-time landscape as “permanent twilight,” illumined only by the distant flare that crowns the offshore gas hub. The contrast captures a wider national dilemma. The Republic of Congo produced an average of 344,000 barrels…

A decisive fiscal signal amid imported inflation The Congolese cabinet has opted for what Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Ondaye terms “a shock-absorber of immediate effect”. In a circular disseminated on Sunday, Brazzaville ordered the suspension, for twelve months, of customs duty, IT levies and value-added tax on a basket of everyday foodstuffs and agriculture-related inputs. Wheat, refined vegetable oil, frozen meats, sea fish, rice, powdered milk, fertilisers, livestock feed and certified seeds now cross the national border duty-free. The customs director-general has been mandated to translate the ministerial instruction into operational procedures at ports and inland posts. Although modest in fiscal…

Nighttime capsizing on the Lulonga River Darkness had already settled over the dense equatorial canopy when a motorised barge laden with goods, livestock and scores of passengers lost stability on the Lulonga River, some 700 kilometres north of Kinshasa. Authorities report that the vessel, bound for the neighbouring Republic of the Congo, overturned on Tuesday night near the town of Basankusu. Around fifty-five individuals were hauled from the water by local fishermen and other travellers, yet an estimated 145 remain unaccounted for, their fate swallowed by the brown current. Survivors’ accounts and initial tally Jean-Pierre Wangela, who heads the regional…

Russia’s Shadow and Rome’s Urgency Few European economies feel the weight of Russian hydrocarbons as acutely as Italy, whose energy system still draws roughly forty-five per cent of its natural gas from the east. The invasion of Ukraine has crystallised in Rome a consensus that economic reliance may morph into political constraint. Prime Minister Mario Draghi encapsulated the prevailing mood in an interview to Il Corriere della Sera, insisting that dependency “must not become political subjection” and arguing that diversification could be achieved “more rapidly than imagined only a month ago”. This mix of geopolitical caution and economic pragmatism frames…