Author: Congo Times

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…

A coastal seminar that echoed beyond belle-lettres The sea breeze that drifts through Pointe-Noire’s storied Cercle Africain carried, on 19 July, an unmistakable whiff of diplomacy. Beneath the art-deco arches of the former colonial club, Café Prud’homme convened a seminar that was ostensibly literary but palpably political in its subtext. The protagonist of the afternoon, Bernard Moussoki, presented three recent works—“Dieu nous parle” volumes I and II, and “Le devoir de s’asseoir : construire l’unité du couple”. The event attracted theologians, diplomats stationed on the coast and an attentive local public, all of whom probed the author’s scriptural hermeneutics and…

Social Etiquette and the Grammar of Respect Among the most enduring features of everyday life in the Republic of Congo is the almost ritualised acknowledgment of social hierarchy. In urban Brazzaville as in the riverine districts of Likouala, conversation typically begins with a gesture of deference toward an elder or an interlocutor of higher status. Congolese linguist Jean-Luc Loubassou calls this practice “the grammar of respect that oils the public sphere”. Agreement, or at least the appearance of it, is prized above blunt directness, a preference that seasoned diplomats quickly learn to emulate. This attention to status neither signals servility…

Contextualising Rabat’s Gesture The 30 July directive issued by King Mohammed VI, in his capacity as Chairman of the Al-Qods Committee, constitutes more than an emergency relief order; it is the latest articulation of Morocco’s consistent alignment with Palestinian aspirations. Since the 1975 creation of the Committee within the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, successive Moroccan monarchs have sought to frame the Jerusalem dossier as both a moral imperative and a diplomatic lever. Against a backdrop of recurrent escalations in and around Gaza, the decision to mobilise an estimated 180 tonnes of life-saving goods demonstrates the Palace’s willingness to convert political…

Strategic Urban Sanitation Challenges in Brazzaville A decade of steady demographic growth has stretched Brazzaville’s underground arteries to their limits. According to the World Bank, the Congolese capital has been gaining almost 3 % in population annually, while nearly 40 % of households still rely on informal connections to water and wastewater grids. The Ministry of Urban Sanitation, now led by Juste Désiré Mondélé, has therefore placed the mapping and rehabilitation of buried pipes at the heart of the government’s 2022–2026 National Development Plan. Congolese officials argue that improving subterranean infrastructure is not merely a technical endeavour but a public-health…

Women at the Core of a Science-Led Development Vision When Minister of Scientific Research and Technological Innovation Rigobert Maboundou took the podium in Brazzaville on 30 July, his message was concise yet strategically resonant: supporting women in research and entrepreneurial arenas is no longer a social courtesy, it is an economic imperative. By pledging structured assistance to female and youth-driven initiatives, the minister echoed Article 15 of the 2022 national development plan, which identifies inclusive innovation as a pillar of long-term competitiveness (Government of Congo 2022). That declaration coincided with the fifth “Mbongui de la Femme Africaine”, a platform whose…