Author: Emmanuel Mbala

A High-Level Journey Framed by Strategic Timing When President Denis Sassou-Nguesso lands in Beijing on 3 September at the invitation of President Xi Jinping, the symbolism will extend far beyond a bilateral courtesy. The three-day state visit marks the Congolese leader’s third mission to China since Brazzaville assumed, in 2023, the co-presidency of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Matin Libre Congo). As co-chair, the Republic of the Congo will steward the agenda of this continental mechanism until 2027, culminating in the next FOCAC summit scheduled for Brazzaville in two years. In diplomatic circles, the timing underscores a desire to synchronise…

A Lifelong Commitment to Peaceful Engagement The death of Vital Balla on 24 August in Brazzaville closes a chapter that began well before Congo-Brazzaville itself entered the United Nations in 1960. Born in 1936 in Madingou, Bouenza, Balla was barely twenty-nine when he co-founded the Congolese Association for Friendship Among Peoples (Acap) in 1965. The organisation would be recognised two decades later by the United Nations as a “Messenger of Peace” (UN Department of Public Information, 1987). Over sixty-one uninterrupted years, Balla positioned Acap as a discreet yet efficient platform for people-to-people diplomacy, mobilising teachers, artists and rural cooperatives to…

Youth-led diplomacy crosses the Congo River On a humid August evening along the Charles-Ebina pedestrian alley, just metres from the swirling river that separates Kinshasa from Brazzaville, Jonathan Lumbeya Masuta stepped before an audience of diplomats, UN officials and carefully selected students to continue what he calls “the upstream current of continental renewal.” The president of the International Forum of African Youth for Africa’s Development (FIJADA), accompanied by a small but disciplined delegation, was not merely paying a courtesy visit; he was exporting the intellectual capital generated on the opposite bank during the International Youth Day round-table of 12 August…

Closing of the 2025 Ordinary Session in Brazzaville Under the marble dome of the Palais des Congrès, the Congolese National Assembly and Senate simultaneously lowered the curtain on their 2025 ordinary session on 13 August. National Assembly Speaker Isidore Mvouba and Senate President Pierre Ngolo, addressing a chamber packed with lawmakers, members of the diplomatic corps and invited observers from the Central African Economic and Monetary Community, sounded a note of cautious optimism. “The quality of deliberation has honoured the expectations of our constituents,” Mvouba stated, acknowledging the diligence of the 151 deputies who sat for twelve uninterrupted weeks of…

Global Power Shifts and the Return of Strategic Ambiguity The twilight of the unipolar moment has ushered in a welter of competing centres of influence, magnifying both the promise and the peril of international politics. From Kyiv to Gaza, and in the recent Iranian–Israeli exchanges, conflict theatres now overlap with complex supply-chain interdependencies that bind distant capitals together. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned that “the world is closer to a great-power confrontation than at any time in decades,” a sentiment echoed by analysts at the International Crisis Group. Yet within this volatility, middle-ranking states such as the Republic…

Landmark ruling consolidates diplomatic tenure Few judicial pronouncements carry the dual weight of domestic legal finality and diplomatic resonance. In its 13 August 2025 decision, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Congo definitively affirmed the Republic of Bulgaria’s freehold title to parcel No. 97, section O, a 982-square-metre plot in Brazzaville’s central La Poste district. The verdict, unappealable under Congolese procedural law, extinguishes the claim advanced by Congolese citizen Gisèle Ngoma, who had asserted that her 2021 purchase rendered her the lawful owner. By declaring the Bulgarian state the “sole and legitimate proprietor,” the Court has closed a dispute…

Presidential Decree Marks Strategic Renewal When the Official Journal of the Republic carried the 30 May presidential decree reshuffling the Economic, Social and Environmental Council, the move was interpreted in Brazzaville’s diplomatic circles as a calibrated signal of administrative renewal rather than political rupture (Agence Congolaise d’Information, 31 May 2024). By maintaining former health minister Emilienne Raoul at the helm while introducing three new senior officers, the Presidency sought to preserve institutional memory yet infuse the collegiate body with fresh sectoral expertise. The decree installs Jean de Dieu Goma as vice-president, Hyacinthe Defoundoux as rapporteur and Arsène Mokoma as questor.…

Genealogical evidence re-examined When the late Bernard Bakana Kolélas—longtime mayor of Brazzaville and 1992 presidential runner-up—emerged in public life during the turbulent 1960s, local commentators routinely linked him to the northern Téké community. Recent scholarship, notably the monograph “Bernard Bakana Kolélas ou le rendez-vous d’un homme avec son destin” released in October 2022, corroborates instead a Sundi-Lari filiation rooted in the Pool’s Ntsembo and Ndamba clans. Archival civil-status wp-signup.phps preserved at Kinkala and oral testimonies collected by Fructueux Koléla-Kouka converge on the same fact: Kolélas was born at dawn on 12 June 1933 in Mboloki, a hamlet overlooking the Madzia…

A Parliamentary Roadmap Enters Its Operational Phase When Senator Aristide Ngama Ngakosso welcomed French Ambassador Claire Bodonyi to Brazzaville on 21 August, the meeting appeared routine. Yet diplomats in both capitals viewed the encounter as a discreet turning point: the Franco-Congolese friendship group moved from declaration to implementation of the 2024 memorandum that embeds “information security” within bilateral cooperation. Paris and Brazzaville have long exchanged expertise on defence and public administration, but the new pillar formalises a shared doctrine that malicious digital influence constitutes a strategic threat comparable to conventional subversion. According to the French Senate’s public record, the roadmap…

Strategic Drill Rooted in Modern Threats At daybreak on 22 August, the parade ground of the Académie militaire Marien-Ngouabi reverberated with martial cadences as Lieutenant-General Guy Blanchard Okoï formally activated Opération Tambo, the sixth iteration of the Manœuvre École, or Maneco-6. Designed as a command-post exercise, the drill places senior staff trainees and future unit commanders inside a scenario where a mixed task force must reclaim and pacify a volatile border corridor riddled with trafficking and non-state armed groups. The fictitious plot mirrors genuine security externalities that persist along several central-African frontiers, thus granting the exercise immediate operational relevance, defence…