Author: Emmanuel Mbemba

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…

Fresh Financing Deepens Franco-Congolese Cooperation In Brazzaville on 2 October, Minister of Finance, Budget and Public Portfolio Christian Yoka and French Ambassador Claire Bodonyi affixed their signatures to an addendum channeling an extra CFA 1 billion 968 million into the Telema programme, the flagship vehicle for productive inclusion of vulnerable Congolese (Ministry of Finance communiqué, 3 Oct.). By choosing the Lingala word for “stand up”, policy-makers have framed Telema as both a social contract and a diplomatic gesture, since the funding flows from the Debt Reduction and Development Contract (C2D) that has linked the two republics since 2010. For Paris,…

A notorious curve etched in drivers’ memories Every seasoned motorist heading north from Brazzaville can point out the exact moment tranquillity gives way to adrenaline: the abrupt right-hand turn known locally as the Mbamba bend. Wedged just beyond the hamlet of Inoni falaise, the curve combines a steep gradient, scant shoulder space and a descent hemmed in by discreet ravines. Steering errors here are unforgiving, a reality taught by the long convoy of timber trucks, inter-city buses and private cars that negotiate the spot daily. The road demands an immediate downshift, a firm press on the brake and a split-second…

Regulatory Shift Announced in Brazzaville In a communiqué issued from Brazzaville on 1 October, the Ministry of Transport, Civil Aviation and Merchant Marine, led by Minister Ingrid Olga Ghislaine Ebouka-Babbackas, unveiled a decisive adjustment to the national road-transport framework. The validity of professional licences—known locally as agréments—granted to road hauliers and to their related service industries will henceforth be limited to a uniform five-year term. The ministry presented the measure as a calibrated response to the sector’s need for predictability, improved safety standards and clearer administrative tracking across the Republic of the Congo’s vast road network. A Decree Rooted in…

A diplomatic handshake with financial resonance The margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York offered an opportune theatre for the first encounter between the newly installed president of the African Development Bank, Sidi Ould Tah, and President Denis Sassou Nguesso. On 22 September, the former Mauritanian minister, who took the helm of the continental lender on 1 September, paid tribute to what he called “the crucial role” played by the Congolese leader in his election and to the “steadfast support” that Brazzaville continues to extend to the institution (African Development Bank press communication, 22 Sept.). For the…

A strategic pivot toward international best practice The echoing hall of the ministry on Avenue de la Paix felt momentarily like a lecture theatre as Minister of Finance, Budget and Public Portfolio Christian Yoka opened the technical workshop devoted to validating a new corpus of public-sector accounting standards. His declaration that “we can no longer manage twenty-first-century challenges with twentieth-century tools” captured the political intent behind the initiative. The reform, developed under the Accelerated Programme for Institutional Governance and Reforms (PAGIR) and technically shepherded by the World Bank, positions Congo-Brazzaville to adopt norms broadly inspired by the International Public Sector…

Casablanca as the diplomatic-financial stage By choosing Morocco’s economic capital for the 14-15 September 2025 Investment Round Table, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra signalled a deliberate pivot toward continental marketplaces able to lend both capital and credibility. He framed the venue as a tribute to “excellent historical relations” with Rabat and to King Mohammed VI’s pledge for shared prosperity, yet the decision also embeds Bangui within Casablanca Finance City’s fast-growing ecosystem, now home to more than two hundred twenty banks, insurers and funds active across Africa. A $10.7 billion roadmap anchored in realism Valued at roughly seven thousand billion CFA francs, the…

Grassroots Empowerment Drives Disability Inclusion On an overcast Monday in the Mpila district of Brazzaville, the courtyard of Handicap Humanité (H2O) resonated with restrained excitement. Twenty-two young mothers and women living with disabilities—many of them survivors of gender-based violence—took delivery of the second cohort of equipment funded by the Kotonga project, an initiative whose very name, in Lingala, evokes the idea of “breaking free”. For these Congolese citizens, economic liberation is no longer an abstraction but a tangible ambition sealed in steel freezers, catering ovens and heavy sacks of rice. The ceremony, modest in appearance yet rich in symbolism, embodies…

Strategic Renewal at the Nation’s Gateway For months, the hum of jet engines leaving Brazzaville was accompanied inside the terminal by an altogether less pleasant sensation: tropical humidity unchecked by failing chillers. That discomfort ended on 12 September, when the Director-General of Aérco, Marcellus Boniface Bongho, symbolically cut a ribbon inside the subterranean plant room of Maya-Maya International Airport. Flanked by engineers of the Congolese firm Régal-Congo and representatives of South Korea’s LG Electronics, he confirmed that the airport’s central air-conditioning network—crippled by corrosion and recurrent water leaks—had been fully renovated and was once again operational. The resuscitation of the…

Brazzaville Workshop Signals a Data-Driven Turn In a modest conference room overlooking the Congo River, a cohort of thirty officials from the Directorate-General for Public Procurement Control (DGCMP) gathered between 12 and 14 September 2025 to scrutinise a thick technical report. The document distils twelve months of nationwide data collection on public contracts, an exercise carried out under the Accelerating Institutional Governance and Reforms Programme, better known by its French acronym PAGIR. Opening the session, DGCMP Director-General Joel Ikama Ngatse framed the moment in unequivocal terms. “Reliable figures are the bedrock of credible governance,” he affirmed, insisting that the draft…