Author: Congo Times

Citizen-led constitutional vigilance in focus An expectant silence filled the main auditorium of Université Henri-Lopes when Dr Sergelin Briguel Omboula, constitutionalist and lecturer at the École nationale d’administration et de magistrature, stepped to the lectern. His inaugural lesson, delivered before an audience dominated by first-year law and political-science students, revolved around a proposition both simple and ambitious: only an informed citizenry can guarantee the longevity of the Constitution of the Republic of Congo. In carefully weighted language, the scholar framed the text of 2015 not merely as a legal charter but as a social covenant that requires daily stewardship. Dr…

Aberdeen Summit Poised to Bridge Continents On 18–19 November 2025, Aberdeen will again transform into an African energy agora when the Wider Africa Energy Summit opens its doors. Orchestrated by OGV Group with the support of the African Energy Chamber, the Society of Petroleum Engineers and several bilateral business councils, the forum seeks to convert dialogue into tangible cross-border transactions. Organisers insist that the city’s established North Sea ecosystem offers a neutral launch pad for European supply-chain champions eyeing frontier acreage, from the Atlantic Margin to East Africa. Operators Chart New Upstream Horizons The 2025 edition arrives at a decisive…

A Pink October Rooted in Corporate Responsibility On 15 October 2025, the usually bustling operational sites of Africa Global Logistics (AGL) Congo, Congo Terminal, Terminaux du Bassin du Congo and SAGA Congo temporarily switched from freight schedules to health talk. More than two hundred female collaborators—ranging from crane operators in Pointe-Noire to finance officers in Brazzaville—responded to the call of the company’s medical adviser, Dr Éléazar Céleste Massamba, for a high-level seminar devoted to breast-cancer prevention. The event, held midway through the international “Pink October” campaign, offered participants a forum to discuss risk factors, self-examination techniques and the psychological dimension…

A veteran tactician reflecting from Orléans From the quiet banks of the Loire, sixty-five-year-old Jean-Paul Pila keeps a meticulous eye on Congolese scorelines that now reach him only through streaming services and WhatsApp alerts. The former trainer of the Diables Rouges cadets and of the women’s senior selection admits to a tinge of sadness each time a national side exits a qualifier prematurely. “Distance does not blunt passion,” he confides, his voice still carrying the clipped authority that once animated dressing rooms in Brazzaville, Malabo and Pointe-Noire. Settled in France since 2011, the man who guided Orléans’ under-18s before stepping…

Congolese Olympic Leadership Legacy The national sporting community awoke on 10 October 2025 to news that resonated far beyond the walls of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire of Brazzaville. Jean-Paul Ngaloua, Secretary General of the Congolese National Olympic and Sports Committee for seventeen uninterrupted years, had passed away after a short illness. His departure closes a chapter begun in 2009, when he succeeded Joseph Mokanda Moramwa at the helm of the Committee’s general secretariat. Colleagues recall a man whose discretion never shaded his iron sense of responsibility. Over nearly two decades he became, in the words of a senior federation president,…

Mixed Fortunes in the Balkans The Balkan peninsula offered contrasting narratives for Congo-Brazzaville’s emissaries. In Albania, Partizani Tirana halted a worrying four-game slide by edging Flamurtari 1–0. Brought on in the 58th minute, Archange Bintsouka injected fresh energy on the left flank and was rewarded five minutes later when his team found the decisive goal. Club insiders noted that the Brazzaville-born winger “brought verticality and pressed intelligently”, traits that may catch the eye of national selector Paul Put ahead of November’s FIFA window. A few hundred kilometres north-west, Rijeka were forced to settle for a 1–1 draw at Slaven Belupo…

Senate session opens with security front and centre The marbled rotunda of Brazzaville’s Palais du Parlement regained its ceremonial bustle on 15 October 2025 as senators convened for the seventh ordinary budgetary session. The chamber’s president, Pierre Ngolo, used his keynote address to underscore an issue eclipsing routine fiscal debates: the sudden recrudescence of youth-led violence perpetrated by gangs locally dubbed “bébés noirs” and “kulunas”. Ngolo commended the executive for the ongoing operations designed to reassure citizens, yet cautioned that enforcement will remain fragile “unless anchored in the scrupulous observance of the Republic’s laws and regulations.” The remark set the…

Kinshasa banks on Congolese expertise The early-morning humidity of the Stade des Martyrs had not yet lifted when Barthélemy Ngatsono, flanked by club president Bestine Kazadi, signed the contract that binds him to AS Vita-Club until the close of the next sporting cycle. The Congolese tactician, whose reputation was forged across the Congo River in Brazzaville, has accepted what he terms “a mission of renaissance” for the Green & Black, one of the most followed institutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Club officials insist that Ngatsono’s appointment answers an urgent need for experience after a campaign that left Vita…

A strategic medical hub for the Sangha Standing on the banks of the Sangha River, the freshly built General Hospital of Ouesso now dominates the northern skyline, embodying the government’s stated ambition to reinforce public health infrastructure in every department (ACI). During a working visit on 17 October, the Minister of Health and Population, Jean Rosaire Ibara, expressed “satisfaction” with the pace and quality of the works, insisting that the facility is ready for a phased commissioning. Although the project’s financial and architectural details were not publicly revisited during the tour, the minister underlined that the hospital is conceived as…

Strategic Heart of Brazzaville’s Water Security On the northern outskirts of Brazzaville, the Djiri production complex rises above the banks of the eponymous river, silently delivering close to seventy per cent of the capital’s potable water. Its sprawling settling basins and high-capacity pumps are the culmination of a decade of public investment that has allowed the Republic of the Congo to meet a growing urban demand estimated by the National Institute of Statistics at more than forty million cubic metres per year. In recent weeks, however, this strategic infrastructure has been unsettled by a wave of informal construction undertaken by…