Author: Emmanuel Mbemba

Brazzaville’s Evolving Social Protection Landscape When the Republic of Congo introduced its Single Social Registry in 2019, the initiative was framed as the technocratic backbone of the National Development Plan, a database able to match scarce public transfers with households in greatest need. Supported by concessional financing from the World Bank and technical input from the African Development Bank, the registry today contains more than 450 000 households, according to the Ministry of Social Affairs. Until recently, however, its very design mirrored a traditional notion of citizenship that excluded some 61 000 refugees and asylum-seekers residing mainly in the departments…

A Capital on the Move: Symbolism of the 28 September Walk When Brazzaville’s riverfront awakes to the measured rhythm of hundreds of participants pacing from the Plateau des 15 Ans to Square de Gaulle, the choreography will be anything but spontaneous. Wild Safari Tours and the state-run Office for the Promotion of the Tourism Industry have chosen 28 September, the first morning after World Tourism Day, to stage a five-kilometre promenade celebrating the capital’s architectural, historical and cultural patrimony. The timing is redolent of the United Nations World Tourism Organization’s annual plea for “tourism for inclusive growth” (UNWTO, 2023) and…

Epidemiological Snapshot of an Ancient Foe The World Health Organization’s Situation Report N°6, released on 7 August 2025, records 1 842 cumulative suspected cholera cases and 56 fatalities since the first alerts in mid-May. Over three-quarters of notifications emanate from riverine districts stretching from the Pool downstream to the Plateaux, reaffirming the historical correlation between Vibrio cholerae transmission and seasonal fluctuations of the Congo River. Although the case-fatality ratio stands at a controlled three percent, epidemiologists warn that any disruption in rehydration protocols could tip the balance. UNICEF field officers attribute the recent spike to a fortnight of unseasonal torrents…

Epidemiological Snapshot of August 2025 The seventh situation report issued on 9 August 2025 records 1 128 suspected cholera cases and 32 fatalities since the index alert in Makoua six weeks earlier. While the absolute figures remain below the peaks of the 2009 and 2017 outbreaks, the geographic diffusion—stretching from the Ogooué basin to peri-urban Brazzaville—places new pressure on the surveillance grid maintained by the Ministry of Health and Population. Field laboratories in Owando and Pointe-Noire confirm that the current strain belongs to the El Tor lineage, serotype Inaba, mirroring profiles circulating simultaneously in western Democratic Republic of Congo. According…

Calendar Anchored in Legal Certainty Brazzaville’s Official Gazette on 7 August carried the Interior Ministry’s decree that synchronises two critical moments in the electoral cycle: the nationwide revision of voter lists from 1 September to 30 October 2025 and the presidential poll on 22 March 2026, with armed-forces personnel casting their votes five days earlier. The timeline is consistent with the constitutional requirement that the Head of State be elected at least forty-five days before the end of the incumbent’s mandate, a provision embedded after the 2015 referendum. National authorities stress that the ten-week window for enrolment will allow the…

Independence Festivities as a Catalyst for Public Health Each August, Congo-Brazzaville’s Independence commemorations provide a moment of collective reflection on nation-building. This year, the festivities acquired a distinctly public-health dimension with the launch of Lipanda ya Mboka—literally “Freedom of the Nation”—a promotional eye-care campaign initiated by the non-governmental organisation Œil Droit, Œil Gauche (ODG). The programme, which runs from 6 to 31 August in Brazzaville, offers ophthalmic consultations and prescription spectacles at markedly reduced prices, aligning patriotic celebration with the pragmatic objective of expanding access to essential health services. A Silent Epidemic of Preventable Visual Impairment The campaign arrives against…

Aligning with the Republic’s digital transformation roadmap The Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and the Digital Economy lists cash-light transactions among the pillars of Congo Digital 2025, the national strategy endorsed by President Denis Sassou Nguesso. LEO’s architecture, hosted in a regional cloud certified by the Banque des États de l’Afrique centrale, dovetails with that policy by lowering the entry threshold for first-time users of electronic banking. According to BCEAC data, only 24 percent of adult Congolese held a bank account in 2022, yet mobile phone penetration exceeded 96 percent. The gap represents both a challenge and an opportunity: bringing digitally…

French Withdrawal Accelerates Across the Continent From Rabat to Pointe-Noire the tricolour logos that once dominated African high streets are being repainted. In the course of eighteen months Société Générale announced the divestiture of a dozen subsidiaries, including its Congolese unit sold to Vista Group in 2023, while BNP Paribas finalised its West African exit and BPCE reduced its network to a handful of representative offices (Reuters, company statements 2023-24). Rather than an isolated repositioning, the decisions reflect a long-gestated consensus in Parisian boardrooms that capital and compliance budgets yield higher risk-adjusted returns in Europe or North America. Executives frame…

Regional Corridors at a Turning Point From the forested tri-border junction of Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, the six-member Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) sought this July to translate continental ambition into local reality. The sixteenth Trans-Border Fair of Central Africa, widely known by its French acronym FOTRAC, unfolded over two weeks in Kyé-Ossi, Bitam and Ebibeyin, towns whose dusty arteries funnel much of the sub-region’s informal commerce. In the broader diplomatic discourse on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), corridors are often invoked as metaphors; here they were literal, throbbing with trucks, small vendors and customs…

Bangui Hosts African Caucus 2025 Spotlighting Finance A humid August morning on the banks of the Oubangui River set the stage for the African Caucus 2025, a discreet yet influential conclave that annually unites African finance ministers and central-bank governors. With macroeconomic coordination on the agenda, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra used a side-meeting at Bangui’s Palais de la Renaissance to invite United Bank for Africa to plant its flag in the Central African Republic. The move, he argued, would expand credit in a country where the ratio of private-sector loans to GDP remains below four per cent, one of the continent’s…