Author: Emmanuel Mbemba

Brazzaville to Become the Capital of Local Content From 4 to 7 November 2025 Brazzaville will welcome the fourth Conference and Exhibition on Local Content in Africa, better known as CECLA 2025. The gathering, convened under the banner “Building Together the Energy Future of Our Continent”, is expected to attract public officials, international oil-and-gas majors, equipment manufacturers, financiers and a growing constellation of Congolese entrepreneurs. In positioning itself as host city, Brazzaville signals that the debate on local content has moved from specialised boardrooms to the centre of national strategy. A Law Waiting in the Wings The Ministry of Hydrocarbons…

A Recurrent Tax Dilemma in Central Africa When Balthazar Engonga Edjo’o opened the forty-fourth ordinary session of the CEMAC Council of Ministers in Brazzaville on 31 October, his statement was both familiar and urgent. The Community Integration Tax (TCI), legally instituted in 1999 as the cornerstone of the Union économique de l’Afrique centrale (UEAC) financing mechanism, is once again under-performing. According to the Commission’s latest execution report, the average regional recovery rate has hovered below 55 % since 2021, far from the 80 % threshold deemed necessary to finance common policies (CEMAC Commission, 2023). Budget Ambitions Edge Upward for 2026…

A fiscal roadmap anchored in stability Presenting the 2026-2028 medium-term financial framework to both chambers of Parliament, Finance and Budget Minister Christian Yoka insisted that Brazzaville is “maintaining the course of stability” even as external headwinds persist. The government expects to generate primary surpluses each year of the triennium, resources that will be channelled first to amortise external debt and settle domestic arrears. The ministry’s macro-fiscal scenario assumes average real growth of 3.8 %, inflation contained below the 3 % CEMAC convergence ceiling and a gradual narrowing of the overall deficit to 1 % of GDP by 2028. Targeted debt…

Owando Forum Places Agriculture Centre Stage In the balmy river town of Owando, three hundred kilometres north of Brazzaville, the sixth edition of the Forum Horizon Initiative and Creativity unfolded from 28 to 30 October under the patronage of the local deputy, Joël Abel Owassa Yaucka. Conceived as a think-tank for home-grown innovation, the gathering convened legislators, senior civil servants and entrepreneurs around a shared ambition: translating the demographic energy of the Republic of Congo into productive, climate-smart agribusiness. The opening day rapidly set the tone. Before an audience that included the deputy for Oyo’s second constituency Serges Ikiemi, the…

Historic dialogue between statisticians and industry In an airy conference hall on the banks of the Congo River, executives from the country’s major factories sat shoulder to shoulder with economists of the National Institute of Statistics (INS). The gathering, held in Brazzaville, marked the first formal exchange devoted entirely to revising two cornerstones of the national economic dashboard: the Industrial Production Index (IPI) and the Industrial Producer Price Index (IPPI). INS Director-General Stève Bertrand Mboko Ibara set the tone at the outset, underscoring that high-quality statistics are not an academic luxury, but a decisive lever for business performance and public…

Subsidy Reforms Sweep Across Africa From Lagos to Libreville, energy subsidies are becoming the most contested line in African state budgets. The International Monetary Fund, in successive Article IV consultations and regional staff reports since 2022, has urged governments to unravel what it deems “generalised and distortionary price supports”. The recommendation has already been adopted, with varied fortunes, in countries as diverse as Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo and Senegal. The Fund’s central argument is straightforward: redirecting resources from blanket subsidies to targeted social programmes would strengthen public finances while protecting the vulnerable (IMF Regional Economic Outlook 2023).…

Strategic milestone for Pointe-Noire’s blue economy When the 368-metre Maersk Halifax eased alongside the quays of Congo Terminal after its voyage from Cape Town, a discrete yet significant page of Central African maritime history was turned. Never before had the Autonomous Port of Pointe-Noire received a container vessel capable of carrying up to 15 690 twenty-foot equivalent units. For the management team, the manoeuvre was more than a feat of seamanship; it was a confirmation that years of targeted capital expenditure are aligning with the new geometry of global liner services. “The arrival of the Maersk Halifax is a collective…

Brazzaville strengthens its fintech credentials In the final days of October 2025 the Congolese capital will become an intellectual crossroads for finance, hosting a conference-debate followed by an intensive seminar devoted to crypto-assets and the broader reconfiguration of the global monetary order. The initiative emanates from BT Integral Consulting, headed by banker-entrepreneur Aurélien Damase Bouithy, whose stated ambition is to provide decision-makers in Central Africa with a forum equal to the scale of the continent’s digital financial revolution (BT Integral Consulting). Close to three hundred participants—bank executives, insurers, micro-finance leaders, representatives of the Central Bank and line ministries, scholars and…

Sharp retreat in verified SIM cards raises red flags A discreet yet pivotal indicator of confidence in Congo-Brazzaville’s digital ecosystem has deteriorated markedly this year. Fresh data unveiled in Brazzaville by the Agence de régulation des postes et des communications électroniques (ARPCE) reveal that only 9.13 percent of subscriber identity module cards activated between January and August were supported by complete and accurate identification, compared with 13.20 percent in 2024. The contraction, though it may appear arithmetically modest, translates into hundreds of thousands of untraceable mobile lines circulating across national territory. For a country where nearly three quarters of the…

A discreet arrival with ambitious scope The morning of 21 October saw fifty young Congolese, clipboards in hand, fan out from Brazzaville’s waterfront taxi ranks to remote districts of Sangha and Niari. Their employer, the Russian non-governmental organisation Globus, prefers to let results speak before grand announcements, but the scale of this first nationwide survey has already drawn the attention of municipal chiefs and local media. According to the project coordinator, Koud Etokabeka, the mission is straightforward yet demanding: “capture the real, lived priorities of households so that every future intervention is anchored in verified data.” Globus’ presence in Central…