Author: Congo Times

Diplomatic Courtship Revived in Brazzaville When the Italian delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Edmondo Cirielli, landed in Brazzaville in late May, the choreography felt familiar. Rome has multiplied such missions since its 2022 “Mattei Plan” sought to re-anchor Italian diplomacy in Africa. Yet the Business Forum 2025 marked the first bilateral platform entirely co-designed with Congolese trade bodies since the oil-centric accords of the early 2000s. Congolese Minister of International Cooperation Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso framed the event as a pivot from extractive dependence toward diversified, high-value chains. Italian envoys reciprocated with the mantra of “co-development”, a term that, in…

A Seasoned Conflict Reaches the Beltway That the latest attempt to end the M23 insurrection will be notarised not in Kinshasa, Kigali or even Nairobi but on the banks of the Potomac speaks volumes about the international fatigue surrounding a conflict that has displaced more than 1.5 million civilians since late 2021 (UNHCR, February 2024). Washington’s decision to serve as convener follows months of shuttle diplomacy by Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee, who, according to a senior State Department official, saw “diminishing returns” in regional forums and opted for “a venue both parties perceive as neutral…

Diplomatic Pedagogy Meets Hydrocarbon Realpolitik On 24 June in the Mediterranean port city of Oran, an ostensibly modest signing ceremony drew unusually keen attention from African energy observers. Maixent Raoul Ominga, chief executive of the Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo, endorsed a training convention with the Algerian Petroleum Institute that will dispatch 19 Congolese students into a five-year engineering curriculum supervised by the University of M’Hamed Bougara in Boumerdès. While the headcount is small, the symbolism is sizeable: two state oil champions—Congo’s SNPC and Algeria’s Sonatrach—are translating hydrocarbons cooperation into educational statecraft at a moment when both governments face…

A capital born of colonial railways now courts multipolar partners When the Congo–Ocean Railway first linked Brazzaville to the Atlantic littoral in 1934, it entrenched the city’s role as a logistical hinge of French Equatorial Africa. Six decades after independence in 1960, that same corridor symbolises Brazzaville’s quest for diversified partnerships: European operators maintain rolling stock, Chinese contractors modernise stations and Turkish firms eye the port of Pointe-Noire. The capital’s boulevards still bear Haussmannian traces, yet diplomatic traffic has become resolutely multipolar, reflecting President Denis Sassou-Nguesso’s stated ambition to pursue what his foreign ministry calls “an all-azimuth foreign policy” (Ministry…

Luanda Sets the Stage for a Continental Reality Check The marble halls of Luanda’s Talatona Convention Center reverberated this week with a familiar mantra: Africa must trade more with itself. Addressing the opening plenary of the US-Africa Business Summit, African Union Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf warned that the continent’s intra-African trade hovers around a modest 18 percent—far below Europe’s 60 percent or Asia’s 50 percent (UNCTAD, 2023). His prescription was unequivocal: remove tariff walls, streamline visas and accelerate the African Continental Free Trade Area, AfCFTA. AfCFTA’s Promises Meet Ground-Level Complexities Since its launch in 2021, the AfCFTA has been…

A Cultural Diplomat Ascends the Political Ladder Before entering the cabinet, Martin M’Beri was best known as a musicologist who helped professionalise Brazzaville’s National Ballet in the late 1970s (UNESCO archives, 1991). The red carpets of cultural festivals introduced him to foreign ministers and heads of state, endowing him with a rare fluency in both artistic and diplomatic language. When he joined President Denis Sassou-Nguesso’s first administration in 1984 as Minister of Culture, he turned cultural performance into soft-power outreach, dispatching orchestras to Lagos and Paris at a time when Congo’s economy was faltering under oil price shocks. His trajectory…

A Quiet Revolution in Abuja Behind the ceremonial photographs taken on 25 June 2025 in Abuja, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) unveiled what its architects call the African Currency Marketplace, an electronic bazaar through which importers in Lagos may settle invoices in naira while exporters in Kigali receive Rwanda francs within seconds. Sponsored by Afreximbank, in concert with the African Union Commission and the AfCFTA Secretariat, the project seeks to erode the hegemony of third-party hard currencies in African trade. In the words of Afreximbank president Benedict Oramah, the Marketplace is designed to “make the Washington Consensus irrelevant…

Scramble for Africa and the Birth of Twin Polities When the Berlin Conference adjourned in 1885, Europe’s cabinet cartographers believed they had imposed definitive order on Central Africa. The signatures of diplomats, however, travelled faster than surveyors’ theodolites. France and Belgium each secured a stake along the sinuous Congo River, a waterway whose commercial allure was celebrated by King Leopold II as “the highway to untold riches” (Hochschild 1998). The northern bank fell to Paris as part of French Equatorial Africa, while the southern arc became the personal preserve of Leopold’s Congo Free State. Two administrative capitals—Brazzaville, named after explorer…

Brazzaville’s Banking Beacon and the Promise of Diversification A glossy marketing blitz now greets travellers at Maya-Maya airport: “Invest with Confidence – Crédit du Congo”. The slogan seeks to position the 70-year-old institution, recently acquired by Teyliom’s Vista Group, as the financial spearhead of a new development narrative for the Republic of Congo. Executives in Brazzaville insist the moment is opportune. After two years of modest post-pandemic growth, the International Monetary Fund projects the Congolese economy to expand by 4.3 percent in 2024, provided oil revenues are channelled into productive sectors (IMF, 2023). Yet capital formation remains anaemic, averaging barely…

A discreet show of solidarity in Brazzaville The atrium of WHO’s Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville is usually animated by data dashboards and the discreet hum of epidemiologists poring over surveillance figures. On 10 June, however, it hosted an atypical gathering: Regional Director Dr Matshidiso Moeti stood before several hundred staff members, praising their “tenacity in the face of cascading crises” (WHO Africa press release, 11 June 2024). The meeting, neither formally advertised nor live-streamed, was conceived as an inward-looking moment of solidarity after a gruelling biennium marked by back-to-back emergencies. Moeti’s brief remarks, delivered in English and deftly…