A decade at the helm
From the wood-panelled offices of Brazzaville’s Quai d’Orsay to marathon sessions in multilateral corridors, Foreign Minister Jean-Claude Gakosso has spent a decade shaping Congo-Brazzaville’s external posture. With the republic preparing to mark sixty-five years of independence in 2025, his record invites a measured diplomatic stock-taking.
In August 2015, President Denis Sassou Nguesso entrusted Gakosso with the Foreign Affairs, Francophonie and Diaspora portfolio. Observers note that the former communication minister quickly prioritized continuity, preserving what Congolese officials call a “policy of open doors” first enunciated by the late Antoine Ndinga Oba in the 1990s (Jeune Afrique, 2019).
Ten years on, the minister highlights an absence of disputes with any capital. Independent trackers such as the Lowy Global Diplomacy Index rank Congo among African states maintaining embassies on every permanent-member Security Council territory, a logistical feat for an economy of roughly nineteen billion dollars (World Bank, 2024).
Active non-alignment in practice
In Brazzaville’s worldview, outreach to emerging powers complements, rather than replaces, historic ties with Paris. Over the past decade Chinese contractors have financed two special economic zones, while Russian firms signed mining memoranda covering potash and phosphates in 2023 (Reuters, 2023). French oil majors nevertheless remain top taxpayers.
The ministry frames this posture as “active non-alignment,” an echo of Bandung adapted to twenty-first-century multipolarity. Washington’s 2022 Partnership for Global Infrastructure envoy, Amos Hochstein, described Congo as a “constructive interlocutor” after meetings that balanced energy security discussions with frank environmental concerns about the Sangha Basin (US State Department, 2022).
Libyan peace efforts bear fruit
Congo’s most visible diplomatic venture has been its chairmanship of the African Union’s high-level committee on Libya. Sassou Nguesso personally convened rival factions in Oyo in 2017, and subsequent sessions in Brazzaville produced the so-called Road Map for Inclusive Elections endorsed by the AU Peace and Security Council (AU communiqué, 2018).
Officials in Tripoli now speak of relative calm, citing a seventy-percent reduction in conflict-related fatalities between 2020 and 2024 according to ACLED. Gakosso attributes progress to ‘letting Libyans lead,’ a stance echoed by UN envoy Abdoulaye Bathily during his 2024 Security Council briefing (UN, 2024).
Trade integration and infrastructure push
Beyond security, Brazzaville sees trade integration as existential. Congo ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area in 2018 and has since digitalised its customs single window, cutting border clearance times from six to two days on the Pointe-Noire-Kinshasa corridor, according to the Afreximbank 2024 logistics survey.
The minister argues that smaller economies can leverage scale through connectivity. “When we pool ports, railways and certificates of origin, investors listen,” he told Congolese national television in May. The forthcoming Kinshasa-Brazzaville bridge, co-financed by the African Development Bank, is projected to lift sub-regional GDP by one percent (AfDB, 2024).
Investing in diplomats
Domestically, Brazzaville promulgated a 2025 decree upgrading diplomatic pay scales and pension portability. The Syndicat du Personnel des Affaires Étrangères welcomed what it called “historic alignment” with CEMAC peers. Analysts at the Institute for Security Studies suggest conditions may curb brain drain that earlier affected thirty percent of mid-career counsellors.
UN reform and principled multilateralism
As the United Nations prepares to commemorate its eightieth anniversary, Congo’s foreign minister defends the institution’s founding spirit. In a March 2024 speech to the General Assembly he argued that “multilateralism is the firewall against unilateral coercion,” echoing calls from Indonesia and Mexico for Security Council reform (UNGA records, 2024).
Asked about longevity in office, Gakosso routinely responds with a mix of loyalty and modesty. “I bow before the nation that raised me,” he said during a December 2024 award ceremony. Such rhetoric reinforces a domestic narrative of continuity prized by investors nervous about leadership churn across Central Africa.
Road ahead to 2035
Still, the external environment is tightening. Debt-sustainability reviews by the IMF caution that Brazzaville must balance infrastructure appetites with fiscal prudence, while climate negotiators press for concrete safeguards around the 80,000-square-kilometre peatlands that absorb three years of global aviation emissions (Nature, 2022).
Gakosso insists the two agendas are not mutually exclusive. He points to Congo’s membership in the Blue Fund for the Congo Basin, an initiative seeking to monetize carbon sequestration through green bonds expected to list in Casablanca by 2026. Credit Suisse and Afreximbank advise on the framework (Bloomberg, 2024).
Looking ahead to the 75th anniversary of the Republic in 2035, Brazzaville intends to bid for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, diplomats confirm. Securing the Central Africa slot would crown a period of steady engagement and offer a platform to amplify Congo’s advocacy for climate-security linkages.
Whether that campaign succeeds will depend on diplomatic capital accumulated over the past decade. For now, Jean-Claude Gakosso’s stewardship appears to have consolidated Congo-Brazzaville’s profile as a mid-sized actor that talks to everyone, quarrels with no one, and quietly seeks leverage in an increasingly transactional world order.
