Author: Congo Times

A commemorative act of solidarity On 19 September, the discreet courtyard of the Marien-Ngouabi Integrated Health Centre in Talangaï briefly resembled a logistics hub. Cartons sealed with the blue crest of the Julia-Bouya Foundation were unloaded one after another before being dispatched to neighbouring Moukondo, in Moungali. The operation, led by Dorel Eyobelé—personal representative of foundation president Débora Nyanguila—coincided with the fourth anniversary of Julia Bouya’s death, an occasion the organisation prefers to mark through concrete action rather than solemn speeches. “Madame Bouya believed in practical compassion,” Eyobelé recalled, adding that the donation sought “to strengthen front-line facilities where the…

A Sound at the Crossroads For seasoned listeners in Brazzaville, the memory of Pamela Mounka, Théo-Blaise Kounkou or Zao still resonates like a national soundtrack. Their melodies once travelled far beyond the banks of the Congo River, offering the Republic of the Congo a form of soft power that required little diplomatic protocol. Today, that resonance is fainter. Outside the fast-rising lane of so-called urban music—epitomised by the digital success of Tidiane Mario, Diesel Gucci, Sam Samouraï, Makhalba Malecheck and Afara Tsena—the broader Congolese catalogue rarely breaks into international charts, draws modest fan communities and appears sporadically on foreign airwaves.…

Diplomatic momentum in Cap-Haïtien Cap-Haïtien’s seafront, still marked by the echoes of Toussaint Louverture’s republican optimism, provided a symbol-laden backdrop to the visit of Lydie Pongault, Minister of Cultural, Tourism, Artistic Industries and Leisure of the Republic of Congo. Received on 17 September by her Haitian counterpart Patrick Delatour, the Congolese envoy carried a sealed letter from President Denis Sassou Nguesso to the Transitional Presidential Council, formally requesting Port-au-Prince’s support for the candidacy of Firmin Édouard Matoko for the 2025-2029 mandate at the helm of UNESCO. The Haitian minister, himself an architect by training and a long-time advocate of heritage…

Omani Cultural Diplomacy in Focus The soft morning light in old Muscat lent a solemn hue to the wide forecourt of the National Museum as Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso, Minister of International Cooperation and Promotion of Public-Private Partnerships of the Republic of Congo, walked past the ceremonial guards on 15 September. Standing barely four hundred metres from Al-Alam Palace and framed by the minaret of Ali Musa mosque, the institution has become a nerve centre of the Sultanate’s cultural diplomacy since its public opening in 2016. By choosing this venue as his first stop in the Sultanate, the Congolese minister…

Congolese Vanguard Captivates Afrima Jury The announcement of the 2025 All Africa Music Awards short-list has once again confirmed the Republic of Congo’s capacity to impress well beyond its borders. Five Congolese signatures – the crooner Singuila, the razor-sharp rapper Jessy B, the turn-table innovator DJ Mombochi, the evergreen Espe Bass and the hybrid single “Lifoli” – have been retained in some of the ceremony’s most watched categories. That breadth of styles, from R&B ballad to electro-rumba experiment, illustrates how national heritage and contemporary ambition interact in Brazzaville’s studios. Afrima’s jury highlighted “creativity rooted in identity”, a phrase that resonates…

Brazzaville Poised for a Night of Rumba Majesty The evening of 20 September is already being hailed by local observers as the cultural high point of the rentrée in Brazzaville. The capital’s most storied venue will resonate with the syncopated guitar lines and vocal harmonies that define the rumba, as Bozi Boziana—affectionately dubbed “Grand-père”—joins forces with constant crowd-pleaser Walo Boss-Tino. Far beyond a conventional double-bill, the organisers have carefully framed the event as a civic celebration of a genre that remains both archive and laboratory for Congolese identity. The publicity material speaks of a “living heritage in motion”, a formulation…

A Literary Beacon: Damas and the Négritude Movement When Black-Label first appeared in 1956, Léon-Gontran Damas—already recognised alongside Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor as a co-founder of Négritude—delivered a poetic manifesto whose cadence, irony and anger dismantled the polite hierarchies of colonial letters. By layering Creole inflections over metropolitan French, he defied the linguistic purism that had relegated Caribbean and African experiences to the margins. More than six decades later, the collection remains a touchstone for writers interrogating race, class and belonging. From Page to Stage: Anatomy of the “Black-Label” Workshop Between 22 and 25 September, the Institut français…

Trust: The Invisible Currency of National Cohesion Across the Republic of Congo, the question of confidence—this subtle but decisive inclination to believe that the other will do no harm—has quietly moved to the centre of public conversations. When neighbours hesitate to lend a hand, when professionals suspect hidden agendas, and when institutions appear distant, the social fabric thins. Trust, by definition, presupposes a sense of security anchored in honesty, objectivity and an admitted fallibility. Without those virtues, the sense of community falters, opening the way to doubt and ultimately to confrontation. From Mistrust to Defiance: A Slippery Psychological Path The…

A strategic pivot toward international best practice The echoing hall of the ministry on Avenue de la Paix felt momentarily like a lecture theatre as Minister of Finance, Budget and Public Portfolio Christian Yoka opened the technical workshop devoted to validating a new corpus of public-sector accounting standards. His declaration that “we can no longer manage twenty-first-century challenges with twentieth-century tools” captured the political intent behind the initiative. The reform, developed under the Accelerated Programme for Institutional Governance and Reforms (PAGIR) and technically shepherded by the World Bank, positions Congo-Brazzaville to adopt norms broadly inspired by the International Public Sector…

A Call Resounding in Brazzaville The afternoon heat of 14 September had scarcely begun to abate when delegates of the Rassemblement des Forces du Changement gathered for the final session of their founding assembly in the capital. From the podium, President Clément Mierassa let no rhetorical flourish obscure the gravity of his message: the nation, he said, stands at a crossroads. Without rancour but with unmistakable urgency, he invited his peers to embrace “the work that will usher in a profound mutation” of political practice in Congo-Brazzaville. From Diagnosis to Actionable Programme Mierassa’s speech offered more than an alarm bell;…