Author: Michael Kimbangu

Strategic Timing for Economic Diversification In the marble-lined hall of the Ministry for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises and Handicrafts, Minister Jacqueline Lydia Mikolo formally opened a process that many economists had anticipated: the drafting of Congo-Brazzaville’s first comprehensive national policy for small and medium-sized enterprises and artisans. The move comes as the government pursues its 2022-2026 National Development Plan, in which economic diversification is described as a “sovereign imperative” after years of dependence on hydrocarbons. According to the African Development Bank, oil still accounts for roughly 45 percent of gross domestic product and 80 percent of exports, leaving the economy…

Rio Ceremony Elevates Congolese Expertise In the vaulted ballroom of a Rio de Janeiro hotel, overlooking the placid curve of Copacabana, the global factoring community gathered for its fifty-seventh annual conclave. It was there that Avant Gotène, Director of Factoring and International Trade at Banque Postale du Congo, was once again called to the stage to receive the Factors Chain International Ambassador of the Year award for 2025. The applause, according to participants, was as resonant as the South Atlantic surf outside, an audible recognition that Brazzaville now speaks with an assured voice in a financial niche once dominated by…

Abuja as an Arena of Continental Ambitions The stately silhouette of the Abuja International Conference Centre offered an apt theatre for Afreximbank’s thirty-second Annual Meetings, an event that has evolved into a de facto summit on the political economy of the continent. Over six thousand delegates filed past meticulous security cordons, among them five heads of state, twenty-three trade ministers and an eclectic retinue of financiers, policy wonks and journalists. Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, opening the proceedings, declared that “Abuja must be remembered as the place where Africa moved from declarations to delivery,” a flourish that captured both the soaring…