Author: Congo Times

Brazzaville at the Center of Continental Ambition For three days the Kintélé International Conference Center, a modern complex on the northern bank of the Congo River, morphed into the cockpit of Africa’s energy diplomacy. Delegations from eighteen member states of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) arrived with a single-sheet agenda: compress years of preparatory work and give the African Energy Bank—popularly abbreviated BAE after its French designation—its final political impetus. The choice of Brazzaville was hardly incidental; ever since President Denis Sassou Nguesso welcomed APPO’s headquarters in 2018, Congo-Brazzaville has positioned itself as an honest broker between hydrocarbon giants…

Geography as a Strategic Asset The Republic of Congo stretches for barely 170 kilometres along the Gulf of Guinea, yet those mangrove-lined estuaries give the country a coveted maritime gateway that few landlocked neighbours can claim. Behind the shoreline, a vast carpet of equatorial forest—covering roughly two-thirds of national territory—feeds the oxygen of a global climate system and harbours biodiversity now monitored by UNESCO biosphere reserves. The coastal plains rise quickly toward the Batéké plateaus in the east, a geological corridor rich in lateritic soils and underscored by iron ore, potash and phosphate seams that have lately attracted South-South capital…

Domestic Talent at the Forefront In the carefully tiered architecture of African football, the African Nations Championship (CHAN) remains the only continental tournament reserved exclusively for home-based professionals. For the Republic of Congo, whose senior side traditionally draws on a global diaspora, the so-called Congo B selection provides a laboratory for cultivating domestic expertise while projecting a distinctive brand of sporting sovereignty. Federation officials in Brazzaville routinely underline that the squad, colloquially dubbed the Diables Rouges locaux, functions as a showcase for the national league’s competitive depth, a point reiterated by the Fédération Congolaise de Football (Fécofoot) during a recent…

Bangui Hosts African Caucus 2025 Spotlighting Finance A humid August morning on the banks of the Oubangui River set the stage for the African Caucus 2025, a discreet yet influential conclave that annually unites African finance ministers and central-bank governors. With macroeconomic coordination on the agenda, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra used a side-meeting at Bangui’s Palais de la Renaissance to invite United Bank for Africa to plant its flag in the Central African Republic. The move, he argued, would expand credit in a country where the ratio of private-sector loans to GDP remains below four per cent, one of the continent’s…

Bergen Pitch and the Symbolism of Neutral Soil When the public address system inside Norway’s Brann Stadion announces the squads of Congo-Brazzaville and Sudan, it will do more than inaugurate a football match. It will mark a moment in which Central African sporting ambition intersects with European logistical pragmatism, a scenario rendered necessary by renovation work at several designated CHAN stadiums on the continent (CAF, 2024). For Brazzaville, the relocation is also an unexpected stage for showcasing the depth of its domestic league, away from the familiar humidity of the equatorial basin and under the North Sea breeze. Recent Form:…

A Quiet Arrival with Loud Implications When the last of seven rubber-tyred gantry cranes rolled off the vessel into the yards of Congo Terminal on 31 July 2025, no ribbon-cutting ceremony was broadcast on continental television. Yet, for shipping lines recalibrating their West African rotations, the discreet arrival signalled a logistical leap of rare magnitude. With a lifting capacity of forty tonnes, the new machines can stack containers five stories high across seven rows, a specification that effectively rewrites the port’s spatial arithmetic and anticipates a new generation of 366-metre vessels already testing Atlantic drafts. Port operators across the Gulf…

Continuity in Command, Nuanced in Purpose In the sweltering late-July humidity of Brazzaville, the general assembly of Saint Michel de Ouenzé unfolded with almost diplomatic choreography. By unanimous acclamation Victor Magloire Nganguia was reconfirmed as president of the football section, a decision that marries institutional continuity with renewed strategic intent. Flanked by First Vice-President Serge Mondelé Mbouma and Second Vice-President Alexis Ngatsé, the veteran administrator accepted a mandate that extends beyond the touchline into the domains of reputation management and community cohesion. Observers familiar with the club’s internal dynamics note that the carefully balanced executive slate reflects the imperative of…

Strategic Warehousing as Energy Diplomacy In the northern outskirts of Pointe-Noire, two freshly painted steel hangars now rise where coastal scrub once stood. Their apparent simplicity belies a strategic purpose that reaches well beyond municipal boundaries. By earmarking the site of Mongo Kamba II for high-voltage transformers and gas-insulated spare parts, the Republic of Congo signals an ambition to embed resilience into an electricity grid that has historically strained under both climatic shocks and demographic growth. Minister of Energy and Hydraulics Emile Ouosso, touring the compound in early August, framed the initiative in distinctly political terms, calling the new storage…

Diaspora Footprints on European Turf When Erving Botaka Yoboma headed down the tunnel of Novorossiysk’s Central Stadium on Sunday evening, Arsenal Tula’s away win had already been filed as a minor footnote in the third round of Russia’s First League. Yet for Congolese observers, the defender’s ninety steady minutes were another quiet marker of a wider phenomenon: the Republic of Congo’s footballing diaspora is stretching its cleats ever deeper into European soil, transforming individual careers into an aggregate instrument of national visibility. The figures remain modest: barely thirty Congolese internationals are currently registered across Europe’s top two divisions, according to…

Strategic Geography at the Heart of Central Africa Few African capitals are drawn as emphatically into the regional fabric as Brazzaville. Perched on the southern rim of Malebo Pool and facing Kinshasa across the Congo River, the city stands at a natural crossroads for riverine and overland traffic. Diplomats stationed along the riverfront regularly remind visitors that eighty per cent of the Republic’s external trade volume still pivots around this artery, giving geography a distinctly political cast. Flanked by Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Gabon, the Angolan exclave of Cabinda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the country presents…