Author: Patrick Mbuyi

Brazzaville hosts high-stakes regional budgeting With understated protocol yet palpable determination, the 44th ordinary session of the Council of Experts of the Central African Economic Union (UEAC) opened on 27 October in the Congolese capital. Delegations from Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and Chad converged to refine the Community’s draft budget for 2026, set at a provisional CFA 85 billion—approximately USD 150.8 million. The conclave precedes the ministerial meeting of 31 October, where the final envelope will be validated, and positions Brazzaville once again at the centre of sub-regional economic diplomacy. A modest yet meaningful rise…

Renewed institutional resolve in Brazzaville Eight October’s opening of the second awareness-raising workshop on Congo’s overhauled public-procurement code crystallised the renewed resolve of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority to anchor governance reforms in daily administrative practice. In a sober yet firm address, the Authority’s chair, Ludovic Ngouala, reiterated the body’s statutory mandate: “We shall remain the guarantor of transparency, efficiency and probity in the management of public resources, in full service of the country’s sustainable development.” Such phrasing, delivered in the packed conference hall of the Ministry of Finance annex, set the tone for three days of technical immersion for…

A New Generation of Market Actors When thirty freshly–minted entrepreneurs stepped onto the podium of the Ministry of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises on 6 August 2025, Brazzaville’s humid afternoon air carried more than ceremonial fanfare. The graduation of the first cohort of the Genius programme, stewarded by the National Chamber of Women Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs of Congo under Ms Flavie Lombo, crystallised an inflection point in the Republic’s private-sector narrative. For two intensive months the participants – drawn from agribusiness, digital services, fashion and green technologies – moved from tentative ideation to bank-ready projects, mastering business-plan architecture, financial modelling…

Brazzaville at the Center of Continental Ambition For three days the Kintélé International Conference Center, a modern complex on the northern bank of the Congo River, morphed into the cockpit of Africa’s energy diplomacy. Delegations from eighteen member states of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) arrived with a single-sheet agenda: compress years of preparatory work and give the African Energy Bank—popularly abbreviated BAE after its French designation—its final political impetus. The choice of Brazzaville was hardly incidental; ever since President Denis Sassou Nguesso welcomed APPO’s headquarters in 2018, Congo-Brazzaville has positioned itself as an honest broker between hydrocarbon giants…

From River Corridor to Forest Gateway When the blue-and-white buses of the national entrepreneurship caravan rolled into Dolisie on 17 July, their arrival marked more than a change of scenery. It signalled the opening of a southern chapter in a nationwide effort to translate macroeconomic ambition into micro-enterprise reality. Launched in March under the banner “Jeunes, osez entreprendre”, the programme has already threaded twelve northern towns together, enrolling nearly nine thousand prospective founders in its wake. Now the convoy is testing the promise that the Congo’s southern forests, mountains and intersecting trade routes can catalyse a new generation of private-sector…