Author: Congo Times

Abuja as a Diplomatic Showcase of Continental Finance The Nigerian capital has seldom lacked grand geopolitical theatre, yet the influx of more than six thousand delegates for Afreximbank’s thirty-second annual meetings transforms Abuja into a veritable agora of pan-African finance. A procession of ten heads of state, senior ministers and corporate heavyweights underscores the bank’s newfound centrality to the continent’s growth narrative. The selected theme, “Building the Future on Decades of Resilience”, resonates with a diplomatic audience acutely aware that resilience without structural transformation offers only rhetorical comfort. A Decade of Exponential Balance-Sheet Growth When Professor Benedict Oramah assumed the…

Cartography of abundance and neglect Satellite imagery of the Congo Basin still evokes Joseph Conrad’s fabled green heart of Africa, yet the statistical portrait sketched by the CIA World Factbook, the World Bank and the African Development Bank reveals a state that has the footprint of a middle-income exporter and the development indicators of a low-income agrarian society. Stretching over 342,000 square kilometres and dotted by a mere 6.1 million inhabitants, the Republic of the Congo sits on a coastline that grants it maritime access few landlocked neighbours enjoy, but the port of Pointe-Noire struggles with chronic congestion (World Bank,…

A Symbolic Reunion of Old Allies When Brigadier-General Francis Chakauya led twenty-two Zimbabwean officers across the manicured parade ground of Brazzaville’s Marien-Ngouabi Military Academy in late June, it was more than an academic courtesy call. The Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe forged a battlefield fraternity during the Second Congo War, when Harare deployed combat aircraft and elite troops to buttress former president Laurent-Désiré Kabila (International Crisis Group, 2001). Two decades later, the leitmotif is pedagogy rather than firepower, yet the political message endures: Southern and Central Africa intend to write their defence doctrine in their own lecture halls, not…

Nouakchott hosts CGLU Africa against backdrop of rapid urbanisation Mauritania’s windswept capital is more often associated with desert trade routes than with continental diplomacy, yet on 27–28 June it becomes the fulcrum of Africa’s municipal conversation. The 33rd Executive Committee of United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (CGLU Africa) gathers representatives from all five sub-regions to examine the organisation’s trajectory at a time when the United Nations projects that 950 million Africans will inhabit urban spaces by 2050 (UN-Habitat 2023). Hosting the meeting allows Nouakchott’s regional president Fatimetou Abdel Malick not merely to chair the agenda but to underscore…

A celebration choreographed for reassurance Under a merciless June sun, the esplanade of Brazzaville’s President Alphonse Massamba-Débat Stadium became a theatre of precisely timed salutes and impeccably aligned epaulettes. The 64th anniversary of the Forces Armées Congolaises (FAC) and the National Gendarmerie offered choreography that, in the words of Defence Minister Charles Richard Mondjo, was designed to project “honour, devotion and rigorous protection.” Spectators saw a sixteen-member sample of the Force Publique decorated for merit, yet diplomats present quietly noted that the medal ceremony, though sincere, also served as a morale boost ahead of an election season already casting a…

A teenage tragedy that laid bare a systemic void The ribbon cut in Brazzaville on 19 June 2025 was more than a ceremonial gesture; it was a tacit admission of a structural blind spot that cost a 15-year-old drépanocytaire her life in 2019. Her death for lack of dialysis galvanised First Lady Antoinette Sassou Nguesso, whose Foundation Congo Assistance pledged to end the contradiction of advanced haemoglobinopathy care coexisting with an absence of renal replacement therapy. By synchronising the inauguration with the United Nations-mandated World Sickle Cell Day, Brazzaville underscored the moral urgency of marrying commemoration with concrete action (Les…

From Colonial Artery to Strategic Liability Stretched between Brazzaville on the Congo River and Pointe-Noire on the Atlantic coast, the Congo-Ocean Railway once embodied the colonial ambition to pierce the equatorial barrier and secure maritime access for French Equatorial Africa. Nearly a century later, the 512-kilometre track retains its geopolitical relevance: it remains the sole rail corridor linking the deep-water port of Pointe-Noire to the country’s administrative capital, a lifeline for manganese from Gabon and timber from the northern basin. Yet locomotives today often idle in overgrown sidings, and the once-elegant stations—some modelled on provincial French prototypes—stand chipped, leaking and…

A multilateral institution under fiscal siege When the African Group convened in Paris on 23 June, the anxiety permeating Room XI was palpable. With United Nations assessed contributions plateauing and several major donors signalling austerity, UNESCO confronts a programme budget that could contract by double-digit percentages in the next biennium, echoing the reductions already forecast in the Draft 42 C/5 document (UNESCO 2023 Programme and Budget). Edouard Matoko, the Congolese assistant director-general turned candidate to succeed Audrey Azoulay, chose that moment to speak less as a campaigner than as a diagnostician of multilateral fragility. Citing the UN Secretary-General’s recent plea…

A visit that signals renewed engagement When Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu crossed the palm-lined courtyard of WHO’s country office in Brazzaville on 24 June, the gesture was more than ceremonial. As acting regional director for Africa, he chose the Republic of Congo for his first in-country inspection since assuming office, underscoring the organisation’s resolve to remain physically present where epidemiological stakes are high and fiscal margins narrow. Conversations with national health officials revolved around the unfinished map of universal primary care laid out in the government’s 2022–2026 development plan, a document that remains aspirational without external stewardship. The symbolism of the…

A River That United Before It Divided Long before European mariners inscribed the Atlantic coast on their maps, the Kingdom of Kongo exercised a loose but recognisable sovereignty from the Atlantic estuary to the cataracts above modern-day Kinshasa. Portuguese chroniclers in the sixteenth century marvelled at the kingdom’s diplomatic sophistication, its structured tributary network and its capacity to mobilise regional trade along the great river. Archaeological evidence suggests that copper, ivory and raffia fabrics travelled widely, forging a commercial space whose cohesion owed much to the navigable lower Congo (Thornton 2020). Thus, the river was less a border than a…