Author: Emmanuel Mbemba

A discreet decision with strategic overtones On 12 December 2024, behind the marble façades of the Central African Banking Commission’s headquarters in Libreville, a short decision quietly reshuffled the regional industrial hierarchy. By inscribing Manufacture Bâtiments et Travaux Publics on the exclusive roster of “enterprises of grand standing and of national importance” for the 2025 fiscal year, COBAC placed a Congolese construction group alongside petroleum majors, telecom heavyweights and milling champions that collectively account for a sizeable share of gross domestic product in the six-nation CEMAC bloc (COBAC communiqué, 2024). Congo’s lone BTP standard-bearer Among the forty firms selected, eight…

Nationwide workshop series culminates in Sangha The forested town of Ouesso, administrative centre of the northern Sangha department, has just hosted the final leg of an ambitious government initiative to standardise public procurement practices across Congo-Brazzaville. After earlier sessions in Pointe-Noire and Brazzaville, the three-day gathering brought together members of the Public Procurement Management Cells, or CGMPs, from five departments, municipal officials from Ouesso, Pokola, Impfondo and Oyo, as well as technical staff from the General Directorate for Public Procurement Control. Their shared brief: translate recent reforms of the public contracting code into harmonised day-to-day routines. Strengthening the legal backbone…

A One-Stop Shop for Registration Not long ago, founding even a modest bakery in Congo-Brazzaville required a stamina more often associated with marathon runners than with bakers. Multiple ministries, security clearances and overlapping fees slowed ambitions to a near halt. The Agence Congolaise pour la Création des Entreprises is designed to consign that experience to the past. Created under Law 16-2017 and placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and Handicrafts led by Minister Jacqueline Lydia Mikolo, the ACPCE centralises every legal formality in a single front office located on Avenue Émile Biayenda in Brazzaville,…

Russia’s Shadow and Rome’s Urgency Few European economies feel the weight of Russian hydrocarbons as acutely as Italy, whose energy system still draws roughly forty-five per cent of its natural gas from the east. The invasion of Ukraine has crystallised in Rome a consensus that economic reliance may morph into political constraint. Prime Minister Mario Draghi encapsulated the prevailing mood in an interview to Il Corriere della Sera, insisting that dependency “must not become political subjection” and arguing that diversification could be achieved “more rapidly than imagined only a month ago”. This mix of geopolitical caution and economic pragmatism frames…

Brazzaville poised for a continental crescendo The Congolese capital will devote three December days to the Rencontre des jeunes entrepreneurs d’Afrique, a first-of-its-kind forum whose stated ambition is to place “entrepreneurship at the heart of African youth”. Organisers have chosen 18-20 December 2025 in order to ride the end-of-year momentum when investors revisit portfolio strategies and diaspora professionals return home for the festive season. By positioning itself at that crossroads, Brazzaville signals both confidence in its own ecosystem and openness to the wider continent. A rallying point for youth-led innovation In a macro-economic context still coloured by post-pandemic adjustments and…

South-South Momentum Gains Pace From Jakarta to Johannesburg, the vocabulary of development is being rewritten by the actors of the Global South. Nowhere is this linguistic and economic shift clearer than in the intertwined trajectories of the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Congo. Both countries, signatories to the 2021–2023 Action Plan of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), have declared the present decade one of “shared modernisation” (FOCAC Action Plan 2021). Congolese negotiators emphasise that the notion transcends the trope of raw-material dependency, insisting on a diversified industrial base capable of employing a rapidly growing youth cohort.…

Strategic Mobilisation of Urban Capital The Republic of Congo is preparing to translate policy pledges into asphalt and cobblestones. Announcing the measure on 14 October in Brazzaville, Minister of Urban Sanitation, Local Development and Road Maintenance, Juste Désiré Mondélé, confirmed that the first phase of a nationwide street-paving operation will commence during the opening fortnight of November. Originating from recommendations adopted at the inaugural Urban Sanitation Conference held last February, the scheme is embedded in the freshly validated National Sanitation Policy and signals the government’s intent to upgrade urban infrastructure while pursuing inclusive growth. Brazzaville has been selected as the…

A decisive stride in Congo’s digital odyssey A discreet yet significant milestone was reached this week in Brazzaville. Emerging from a mid-term review with a World Bank delegation led by Heri Andrianasy, the Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, Léon Juste Ibombo, confirmed that twenty high-speed internet access points are operational across the country’s interior. The installations form the vanguard of the Project for the Acceleration of the Digital Transformation, PATN, co-financed by the World Bank and the European Union to the tune of 100 million US dollars. Their activation translates an abstract policy into a tangible service…

A strategic gathering in Brazzaville From 14 to 15 October, the ninth Board of Directors of the Central African Aviation Safety Oversight Agency, ASSA-AC, is convening in Brazzaville under the chairmanship of Serge Florent Dzota, Director-General of Congo’s National Civil Aviation Agency. The meeting is expected to endorse volumes I and II of the Community Training Manual together with a triannual training plan for technical personnel drawn from the six member states of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, CEMAC. Opening the session, ASSA-AC Director-General Eugène Apombi recalled that the community had, since 16 August, equipped itself with…

Strategic mid-stream pause for a flagship programme In Brazzaville the Steering Committee of the Project for Accelerating the Digital Transition, better known by its French acronym PATN, convened on 8 October to conduct an official mid-term stock-taking. The session, chaired by Mr Sylvain Leckaka and informed by a comprehensive memorandum submitted by project coordinator Mr Michel Ngakala, marks the halfway point of an endeavour that began in 2023 with a sunset horizon fixed for December 2027. While such reviews are routine in development finance, the timing is critical: nearly forty per cent of the USD 100 million envelope—jointly mobilised by…