Author: Emmanuel Mbala

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 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 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…

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…

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).…

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…