oCongo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso has taken the oath of office for another term
BRAZZAVILLE, April 17 (NNN-AFRICANEWS) — Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso on Friday has taken the oath of office for another term, extending his 36-year accumulated rule.
The 77-year-old won 88.4 percent of the vote in the March 21 election, boycotted by the main opposition.
He begins a new five-year term, one with a mighty challenge: to curb its reliance on revenue from oil and to grow more food.
And in a country that has notched up huge debts under his decades-long rule, he also plans to boost industry and revive the country’s decrepit railways.
Congo, a land of five million people that abuts the vast Democratic Republic of Congo, has recently had some good economic news.
Things are looking up in its oil capital Pointe-Noire, with production reaching a record 350,000 barrels per day — even as global oil prices have risen to almost $65 (54 euros) per barrel.
Crude constitutes the country’s primary wealth, earning 1.65 billion euros in 2018, according to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global watchdog.
Of this, 448 million euros went to China to pay for Chinese-built infrastructure, EITI said in a report.
Another 340 million went to paying off pre-financing agreements with traders Glencore and Trafigura.
In Nkayi, a town on the RN1 highway between Pointe-Noire and the capital Brazzaville, sugar refining firm SARIS is one of Congo’s rare agricultural success stories.
Its factory sits in hundreds of hectares of sugar cane plantations on the clay plains of the Bouenza region it has cultivated for 50 years.
SARIS produces enough to supply Congo’s 55,000-tonne demand with a surplus left for export, managing director Guillaume Ranson says.
But in almost every other important agricultural area, Congo has to import to meet its needs.
A new sister enterprise, SGMP, has been built in Pointe-Noire to produce corn in partnership with small maize growers in the region.
In industry, new cement factories built for the company of Africa’s richest man, Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, can be seen from the road east towards Brazzaville.
But less than two years ago 375 employees lost their jobs when the Diamond Cement plant built with Indian and Togolese capital went bankrupt in Mindouli, 100 kilometres west of Brazzaville in the southern region of Pool.
Mindouli is also a station on the Congo-Ocean railway which crosses the far south of the country from Pointe-Noire to Brazzaville.
Only freight trains have run since Pool was racked by civil war in 2016-17. — NNN-AGENCIES
