Author: Congo Times

A River Becomes a Border in the Scramble for Africa When European powers gathered at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 the Congo River was transformed from an artery of regional commerce into a geopolitical demarcation. French envoy Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza secured the northern bank for Paris, while King Leopold II of Belgium obtained an immense personal fief south of the current that he baptised the Congo Free State. Contemporary archival dispatches reveal that the river’s breadth was prized as a natural line of defence, sparing cartographers the burden of surveying the dense equatorial forest (French Colonial Archives, 1885). In…

Geography as Destiny for an Underpopulated State For a country that straddles the Equator, the Republic of the Congo enjoys a puzzling anonymity in global conversations. One reason is simple scale: just over five million inhabitants are expected to administer a territory of 342,000 square kilometres, most of it cloaked in dense equatorial forest or seasonally flooded swamp. European cartographers once coloured this expanse an inviting shade of empire, yet the logistical realities of the Mayombé Massif, the swampy Likouala basin and the cataract-punctuated Congo River soon tempered colonial ambitions. Those topographical hurdles remain. According to the United Nations Environment…

A Symbolic Medal with Strategic Weight In Rabat’s art-deco headquarters, Ambassador Christophe Lecourtier affixed the crimson cross of Officer of the Legion d’Honneur on Abdellatif Hammouchi, the dual-hatted chief of Morocco’s National Security (DGSN) and Territorial Surveillance (DGST). At first glance, the glittering medal looked like a simple gesture of courtesy between allies. Yet in Paris and Rabat, diplomats immediately read a deeper sub-text: the honour publicly recognises two decades of dense, operational security cooperation that has weathered cyclical diplomatic storms over visas, Western Sahara and parliamentary spats (Le Monde, 22 May 2024). From Shared Alerts to Joint Arrests French…

Congo Basin forests under diplomatic scrutiny From Yaoundé to Brussels, the 200 million hectares of humid forests stretching across Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have become a litmus test for the credibility of current climate diplomacy. The basin stores an estimated 37 billion tonnes of carbon (WRI, 2022) and shelters unparalleled biodiversity. Yet it also represents a livelihood backbone for nearly 60 million people and an export opportunity that national treasuries can ill afford to ignore. Against this delicate background, the 2017 birth of the umbrella label Fair & Precious, backed by…

A discreet Saturday reset in the Congolese capital On 21 June 2025, a subdued ceremony in Brazzaville’s fourth arrondissement signalled a fresh chapter for the Union pour la Nation, the opposition movement launched scarcely a year ago by the former banker-turned-politician Félix Guy Charles Paul Manckoundia. Away from the grand halls favoured by the ruling Parti Congolais du Travail, Manckoundia unveiled a trimmed National Executive Committee, emphasising what he termed “strategic sobriety” in a brief address relayed by local daily Les Dépêches de Brazzaville. Observers from the Centre d’Analyse et de Prospective des Politiques Africaines told Radio Congo that the…

Anatomy of a Deluge: From the Congo River to Talangaï’s Backyards The first week of June brought yet another bout of torrential rains to Brazzaville, quickly transforming the low-lying districts of Talangaï and Mfilou into a labyrinth of muddy canals. Hydrologists at the University of Kinshasa attribute the sudden rise of the Congo River to a convergence of El Niño-induced precipitation and upstream deforestation that has reduced natural absorption capacity (African Climate Centre, 2024). In Talangaï alone, nearly 5,000 households saw their foundations dissolve in less than forty-eight hours, a human-made vulnerability compounded by decades of informal construction on floodplains.…

A continental rendez-vous in Addis Ababa fuels governance scrutiny The cavernous halls of the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa rarely lack diplomatic theatre, yet the 10th African Public Service Day offered a particularly revealing tableau. Delegations from thirty-two member states, together with representatives of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the African Development Bank, converged under the official theme of bolstering institutional “agility and resilience.” While the agenda echoed familiar multilateral rhetoric, the interventions acquired sharper texture against a post-pandemic backdrop that has laid bare chronic service-delivery gaps across the continent (African Union Secretariat, 2023).…

Viennese overture to Brazzaville’s post-oil ambitions The arrival of Jean-Marc Thystère-Tchicaya and Rosalie Matondo in Vienna on 22 June 2025 placed the Republic of Congo’s diversification gamble squarely under Europe’s chandeliered diplomatic spotlight. The Ministers for Special Economic Zones and Forestry, respectively, are spearheading Brazzaville’s pivot away from hydrocarbon dependence, which still accounts for roughly 60 percent of state revenue according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF, 2024). The invitation came from ASC Impact, an Austrian-based investment vehicle positioning itself at the confluence of climate finance and industrial processing. The underlying wager is clear: that Congo’s 22 million-hectare rainforest belt,…

A Spectre of 2014 Haunts Ouagadougou When Burkinabè crowds torched the National Assembly in October 2014, the gesture signalled more than the end of Blaise Compaoré’s interminable presidency; it announced a popular authorship of constitutional order. The chants—“Hands off our Constitution” and “We are the future”—reclaimed sovereignty as a collective verb rather than a juridical noun. Political scientists duly celebrated a rare instance of non-violent regime change in the Sahel. Yet, almost ten years on, the promise of popular authorship appears suspended rather than fulfilled, raising the question of what became of that insurgent grammar. From Palace Fires to Parade…

An emerging axis between New Delhi and Kinshasa The discreet arrival of multiple Indian delegations in Kinshasa since January has confirmed that New Delhi no longer sees the Democratic Republic of the Congo merely as a distant peacekeeping theatre. According to senior Congolese officers, at least three separate teams from Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bharat Electronics and Tata Advanced Systems have presented product catalogues ranging from light utility helicopters to encrypted battlefield radios (Le Potentiel, 4 April 2024). The tempo of visits has been matched by sustained diplomatic contact: India’s ambassador to the DRC, Madan-Lal Raheja, held two rounds of talks…