Author: Emmanuel Mbala

An inaugural session under heightened expectations For forty-eight hours, from 30 to 31 October 2025, the hemicycle of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) in Brazzaville was the scene of dense exchanges that launched the institution’s new five-year term. Presiding over the opening, Prime Minister Anatole Collinet Makosso reminded the audience that “the solutions to our challenges require the association of all intelligences”, a phrase that quickly became the leitmotif of the meeting. Around him sat ministers, constitutional figures and representatives of the country’s socio-professional bodies, united by the desire to give substance to participatory democracy in Congo-Brazzaville. A…

Government clarifies the scope of the freeze The Interior Trade Director, Belly Fugain Bialoungoulou, flanked by his counterpart in charge of commercial fraud repression, Blaise Mayama Kouenda, entered the press room in Brazzaville on 5 November with a single objective: to dispel the confusion stirred by a recent ministerial circular. Contrary to rumours of a blanket prohibition, the two senior civil servants explained that only fresh imports of machetes and motorbikes are affected. Goods that have already cleared customs retain full freedom of circulation and may reach shop shelves at their usual prices. By framing the decision in those terms,…

Grassroots Engagement in Kouilou The forested corridor linking Pounga, Dimonika, Voilà and D6 is celebrated for its agricultural promise but has lately witnessed sporadic episodes of armed robbery, according to the Kouilou departmental security bulletin released in March 2025. Conscious that purely repressive measures seldom suffice, deputy Paul Valise Matombé opted on 2 November 2025 for an immersive outreach session in each village, placing civic dialogue at the core of crime-prevention policy. The initiative fits within the national orientation note on local governance and security, endorsed last year by the Ministry of the Interior, which encourages elected officials to become…

Historic partnership frames new community drive The colonnades of Brazzaville’s Palais du Parlement seldom lack solemnity, yet the atmosphere on 28 October 2025 was marked by unusual resolve. Convened under the patronage of Speaker Isidore Mvouba and in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme, deputies devoted an entire parliamentary day to the Accelerated Community Development Programme, or PADC. The initiative, scheduled for 2026-2030, is promoted as a strategic fast-track to eradicate poverty through place-based investments. UNDP’s regional director Matthias Zana Naab and resident representative Adama-Dian Barry underlined that the new framework stems from empirical mapping of needs across all…

Presidential Council Sets Reform Tempo Barely two hours sufficed for President Denis Sassou Nguesso to steer the 3 November 2025 Council of Ministers toward an agenda dense with legal modernisation and diplomatic positioning. From the ornate Salle des Banquets of the Palais du Peuple, the Head of State opened the session at 10:00 before closing it at noon, projecting an image of determined efficiency relayed by Government Spokesperson Thierry Lézin Moungalla in an official communiqué released the same afternoon. While routine in form, the gathering proved substantive in content. Three draft laws, one draft decree, a ministerial communication on climate…

A Pointe-Noire Appeal Gains National Echo When Aimée Clarisse Abambila quietly founded the Association des femmes dévouées (AFD) in March 2021, few in Brazzaville’s political circles imagined that the modest initiative would, two years later, command the attention of the highest offices of state. Yet the open letter the NGO released this month, addressed to President Denis Sassou Nguesso, has rapidly travelled far beyond Pointe-Noire, sparking commentary on radio panels and in faculty lounges alike. Its tone is respectful but resolute: AFD urges the head of state to translate the egalitarian spirit of Article 17 of the 2015 Constitution into…

An Unprecedented Attack Reverberates Through the Bench Few images strike the legal conscience of a nation as forcefully as the charred remains of an official vehicle parked within a courthouse compound. That is precisely the tableau that confronted magistrates and litigants on 31 October in Pointe-Noire, after unknown individuals set fire to the car of Attorney General Clément Makita, attached to the city’s Court of Appeal. The assault, reportedly committed by a disgruntled litigant who had prevailed in a civil dispute yet struggled to execute the judgment, has jolted the Congolese judicial community and sparked a debate on the safety…

A fraternal message traversing the nation Few missives manage to combine familial warmth and civic gravity as deftly as the “Lettre de Yakamambu” currently passing from hand to hand throughout Congo-Brazzaville. Penned in an intimate tone—”My dearest friend Mbulunkwé, mboté!”—and signed simply “Diag-Lemba”, the text brings into conversation not only two correspondents but an entire community of compatriots, explicitly naming the mutual acquaintances Itoua, Mboungou and Tati. What might have remained a private exchange is elevated into a collective meditation on nationhood, as the author shares a poem conceived as an “ode for peace” and entrusts its diffusion to the…

Ground-Level Scrutiny of a Crucial Civic Exercise On 28 and 29 October, just hours before the statutory deadline, the General Commissioner of the Follow-up Committee for the Convention on Peace and Reconstruction, Marius Mouambenga, criss-crossed Brazzaville’s most densely populated arrondissements to observe the final strokes of the nationwide voter roll revision. As head of the Observatoire national des élections, the commissioner consciously chose field immersion over written briefings, arriving unannounced in Makélékélé, Bacongo, Talangaï and Ouenzé to test the robustness of procedures and the resilience of personnel engaged in the operation. His brief, he explained to journalists on site, was…

Brazzaville Pays Silent Tribute to a Fallen Envoy A deep hush enveloped the parade ground of the Brazzaville Gendarmerie Region as the flag-draped coffin of Marshal-of-the-Log Serge Divin Miyokidi Bazola was carried shoulder-high by an honour guard. The twenty-nine-year-old gendarme, whose body was recovered from the Obela Mpoko River in the Central African Republic on 15 October after a painstaking month-long search, became the fifth Congolese peacekeeper to lose his life in the same tragic accident. Interior and Decentralisation Minister Raymond Zéphirin Mboulou, flanked by senior parliamentary and defence officials, bowed his head before the bier, symbolically uniting the State…