Author: Mboka Ndinga

Pointe-Noire poised for regional cultural spotlight When the sun sets on 12 September, the harbour lights of Pointe-Noire will give way to an even brighter glow: the stage lighting of the International Festival of Music and Arts, better known as FIMA. For three consecutive evenings, the industrial hub of the Republic of Congo will pivot from crude-oil exports to cultural exports, offering a vibrant illustration of the government’s ambition to diversify the national brand beyond hydrocarbons. Organised by the non-governmental entity MB Production under the stewardship of Médard Mbongo, the festival has quietly matured since its 2001 inception into one…

A Stall That Commands Attention in Bacongo Anyone entering Brazzaville’s storied Total market in the riverside district of Bacongo is likely to encounter a small cosmetics counter whose packaging choices outshine the neon shopfronts around it. Tubes promising increased curvature of the hips and oils touting athletic virility are accompanied by high-definition illustrations of unclothed bodies caught mid-embrace. Shoppers young and old flow past the display; some avert their gaze, others pause with discreet curiosity, and yet others extract their phones for a surreptitious photograph. The vendor, an enterprising man in his thirties, notes that the pictures “speak louder than…

A Novel Rooted in the Pool’s Troubled Memory Published in Brazzaville in 2022, Ghislain Thierry Maguessa Ebome’s Le Repentir unfolds against the backdrop of the Pool region’s militia clashes of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The author, a jurist by training, interlaces legal precision with lyrical prose to chronicle a fictional yet painfully familiar episode of fratricidal violence. Sardine, a former Ninja combatant, confesses to killing the secondary-school student Gilbeau during the height of inter-tribal hostilities. He retains the boy’s school card, a haunting relic that becomes both indictment and icon. When Sardine embarks on a journey to seek…

A Historiographical Enigma That Shapes Regional Memory More than a millennium after he forged the formidable Kongo polity, Mani Kongo Nimi Lukeni remains a liminal figure whose biography blends oral epic, royal propaganda, missionary reports and modern scholarly conjecture. For Brazzaville, Luanda, Kinshasa and Libreville alike, the king’s lineage is not a mere antiquarian curiosity: it crystallises questions of cultural prerogative, borderland legitimacy and intangible heritage management in a sub-region where history still undergirds statecraft. Congolese historians such as Abraham Constant Ndinga Oba argue that three complete dynastic cycles separated Lukeni from the Christian convert Nzinga-a-Nkuwu, suggesting a ninth- or…

Memory, Literature and Nationhood in Brazzaville The sun-washed patios of the Maison Russe in Brazzaville rarely witness a silence as pregnant with expectation as on 26 July 2025. Writers, critics, students and a sprinkling of diplomats settled into polished wooden chairs for the inaugural Grand Atelier Littéraire, curated by the essayist and critic David Gomez Dimixson. Entitled “From Memory to the Future: Literature Building Bridges,” the gathering came at a propitious moment: the Republic of the Congo is refining its cultural diplomacy, and the written word figures prominently in that strategy (Agence Congolaise d’Information, 2024). Seated in the first row,…

A Resonant Weekend in Mouyondzi Under the vaulted sky of Mouyondzi’s public garden, far from the maritime bustle of Pointe-Noire, the reggae ensemble Conquering Lions unfolded two marathon performances on 31 July and 1 August. The concerts, lasting well over three hours apiece, have already joined local lore. What could have been a routine provincial tour became, by common testimony, an exercise in collective catharsis: the pulses of roots reggae merged with the polyrhythms of Central Africa, eliciting both dance and reflection among an audience that soon outnumbered the venue’s formal capacity. Soft Power and the Recalibration of Cultural Policy…

Soft Ballads amid the “Ivorian Miracle” When broadcasters in Abidjan first placed the microphone in front of Daouda Koné in 1976, Ivory Coast was riding the crest of an economic boom often labelled the “Ivorian Miracle” by the World Bank. President Félix Houphouët-Boigny’s developmental formula of agricultural exports, franc-zone stability and political consensus had turned the country into a rare African showcase of modern highways and neon-lit nightlife (World Bank, 1984). Against a continental backdrop where Fela Kuti condemned military juntas in Nigeria and Thomas Mapfumo harangued Rhodesian rule from Zimbabwe, Daouda offered a discreetly different wp-signup.php: soft-spoken ballads in…

Festival Premiere Affirms Presidential Patronage On a humid July evening in Brazzaville, the velvet curtains of the National Auditorium parted to reveal more than a film: they unveiled a carefully calibrated gesture of cultural statecraft. Before an audience led by President Denis Sassou Nguesso, French-Algerian director Yamina Benguigui presented her seventy-minute documentary “Rumba congolaise, les héroïnes”. The screening served as a linchpin of the twelfth Pan-African Music Festival, a forum that, since 1996, has acted as the Republic of the Congo’s most visible instrument of soft power. Applause broke across the hall not merely for celluloid craft but for the…

Brazzaville Sounds and Continental Stakes Hotel Ledger Plaza, overlooking the Congo River, thrummed with polyphonic rehearsals as delegates completed the intellectual score of the 12th Pan-African Music Festival. In closing the reduced-format symposium, Minister Marie-France Lydie Hélène Pongault insisted that African music must be treated not as an ephemeral entertainment but as a civilisational archive and a forward-looking industry. Her argument drew applause from musicologists, UNESCO advisers and producers who recognise that songs from Kinshasa to Cape Town are already streamed in São Paulo, Seoul and Seattle. The question is how Brazzaville can convert that global curiosity into a durable…

Legal Framework vs Customary Authority When the Congolese Family Code was overhauled in 2016, legislators in Brazzaville hailed it as a milestone in the country’s normative architecture. The text, inspired in part by the Maputo Protocol and the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, unequivocally protects a surviving spouse’s right to remain in the marital home and administer joint property. On paper, therefore, dispossession is not a legal option. Yet, in several départements, customary chiefs retain moral authority that can eclipse statutory provisions, particularly in moments of bereavement when emotions and tradition intertwine.…