Author: Congo Times

A Stage Set for Contemporary Sports Diplomacy When Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham Hotspur take the field at the Stadio Friuli, officials in Brussels, London and Paris will watch almost as attentively as the travelling supporters. The UEFA Super Cup has evolved into more than a ceremonial curtain-raiser; it is now a concise demonstration of European soft power, branding reach and regulatory acumen. UEFA’s own economic report shows that last season’s continental finals drew cumulative global audiences exceeding 250 million, a figure that ministries of foreign affairs increasingly view as a reservoir of influence (UEFA Annual Report 2023). While France deploys…

A Strategic Pivot in Congolese Social Policy When the Congolese authorities and the World Food Programme (WFP) confirmed, on 6 August in Brazzaville, the transition from the “Semences d’avenir” pilot to a full-fledged National School Feeding Programme, the announcement resonated far beyond the walls of the ministry building. It signalled a calibrated policy shift in which nutrition, education and agricultural self-reliance converge with foreign-policy considerations. In the words of WFP representative Gon Meyers, the agreement covering an initial twenty-five schools is “the first institutional bridge toward a universal scheme rooted in local value chains” (WFP, 6 August 2025). For a…

Diplomatic Marathon Behind Matoko’s Bid When Prime Minister Anatole Collinet Makosso walked into the presidential palace this week, his portfolio was less a binder than a travelogue. In less than two months, he and a compact ministerial cohort have logged thousands of miles, moving from Lomé to Lisbon, from Brasília to Bangkok, to present what Makosso calls “a Congolese offer of service to multilateralism.” The audience with President Denis Sassou Nguesso was therefore both ritual and report: a measured debrief on how Congo-Brazzaville is translating loyalty to UNESCO into votes for Firmin Édouard Matoko, a veteran of the Paris-based agency…

Aligning with the Republic’s digital transformation roadmap The Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and the Digital Economy lists cash-light transactions among the pillars of Congo Digital 2025, the national strategy endorsed by President Denis Sassou Nguesso. LEO’s architecture, hosted in a regional cloud certified by the Banque des États de l’Afrique centrale, dovetails with that policy by lowering the entry threshold for first-time users of electronic banking. According to BCEAC data, only 24 percent of adult Congolese held a bank account in 2022, yet mobile phone penetration exceeded 96 percent. The gap represents both a challenge and an opportunity: bringing digitally…

A Continental Showcase with Geopolitical Overtones When the Confederation of African Football assigned the eighth African Nations Championship to a transnational trio—Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania—it quietly acknowledged East Africa’s rising appetite for continental leadership. For Brazzaville, whose football diplomacy has been largely conducted through the more glamorous senior Africa Cup of Nations, CHAN 2025 offers a lower-risk yet symbolically potent arena. The tournament is restricted to domestically based players, allowing governments to project the health of their domestic leagues as a proxy for wider institutional stability (CAF communiqué, 2024). President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s administration has long framed sport as a…

An Unexpected Comeback on Brussels Stage When Ley de Mamad’u stepped onto a modest Belgian stage in April 2025 to preview “Taxi-moto”, few anticipated the ripple that a three-minute rumba track could send through Congo-Brazzaville’s sizeable diaspora community. Better known at home as “Sugar Daddy” for his velvety baritone, the artist had receded from the spotlight since his 2020 ballad “La Paix” became an unofficial soundtrack to post-election reconciliation rallies. His current re-emergence, strategically unveiled in Europe before reaching the Congolese airwaves, reflects an increasingly common pattern among Central African musicians who test new material on the diaspora circuit, then…

Rumour Ecology in Brazzaville Public Sphere In the crowded cafés of Poto-Poto and across the airwaves of community radios, whispers about the 2026 presidential race circulate with the urgency of the rainy-season River Congo. Seasoned observers note that every electoral cycle rekindles this informal marketplace of tales, yet the present moment feels unusually volatile. Digital penetration has leapt from 9 percent of households in 2016 to more than 35 percent in 2023, according to the International Telecommunication Union, altering the velocity and reach of political gossip (ITU 2023). The Congolese state is hardly unfamiliar with this phenomenon. In 2002 and…

Holiday Consumption Meets Digital Finance For a growing share of Central African travellers, the act of stepping onto a beach in Pointe-Noire or a rainforest lodge on the Lefini plateau now begins not with a wad of bank notes but with a slender plastic card. Holiday seasons, traditionally weighted with logistical frictions around foreign exchange and security, are being reshaped by digital payment rails. Recent numbers from the Bank of Central African States indicate that electronic transactions across the Communauté Économique et Monétaire de l’Afrique Centrale rose by roughly thirty-eight percent year-on-year in 2023, outpacing nominal GDP growth. The spike…

Memory, Literature and Nationhood in Brazzaville The sun-washed patios of the Maison Russe in Brazzaville rarely witness a silence as pregnant with expectation as on 26 July 2025. Writers, critics, students and a sprinkling of diplomats settled into polished wooden chairs for the inaugural Grand Atelier Littéraire, curated by the essayist and critic David Gomez Dimixson. Entitled “From Memory to the Future: Literature Building Bridges,” the gathering came at a propitious moment: the Republic of the Congo is refining its cultural diplomacy, and the written word figures prominently in that strategy (Agence Congolaise d’Information, 2024). Seated in the first row,…

Franco-Congolese Rap as an Emerging Diplomatic Language When Tiakola, known for his crystalline melodic phrasing, joined forces with the more percussive Genezio for the EP “Fara Fara Gang”, the collaboration was immediately framed by industry observers as a commercial coup. Yet the release also deserves attention from diplomatic circles: it embodies a form of non-state soft power that operates at the intersection of the Congolese diaspora in France and a rejuvenated cultural scene in Brazzaville. Streaming data compiled by Spotify for Artists indicate that more than forty percent of the EP’s first-week plays originated from Central and West Africa, an…