C1 certificates handed in Brazzaville
The auditorium of the National Pedagogic Research Institute in downtown Brazzaville fell silent before erupting in applause on 27 November, as three young Congolese finally stepped forward to receive the certificates that turn them into the country’s newest fully licensed German teachers.
Officials from the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, the German embassy and the Goethe-Institut Kamerun looked on, underlining the institutional weight placed on language learning at a moment when Congo-Brazzaville courts wider cultural and economic links with Europe.
Four intense years between Yaoundé and Berlin
Ropha Prince Harmelin Baleketa, Jordy Gurvitch Bola and Monik François Tsounga Mayela brandished C1-level certificates, the gold standard for non-native speakers, capping a four-year odyssey that began in Yaoundé and ran through lecture halls, virtual classrooms and currywurst stalls in Berlin.
In a brief address, German embassy First Counsellor Vera Clemens praised the trio’s ‘passion, tenacity and will to grow’, stressing that a new language delivers more than grammar; it creates professional doors and reshapes worldviews, a message that resonated with parents clutching smartphone cameras in the front row.
The celebration marked the formal close of a bilateral programme launched in 2021 through a memorandum of understanding tying the Congolese ministry, the Goethe-Institut and the German embassy into a single goal: train a home-grown cohort able to revive German courses in the public school network.
Back in 2020, the five original scholarship winners spoke barely a sentence of German, recalls Ilka Seltmann, programme officer at Goethe-Institut Kamerun, who supervised their intensive immersion at the Higher Teachers’ Training College of Yaoundé before steering them toward a bachelor year at the University of Yaoundé I.
In lecture theatres packed with Cameroonian trainees, the Congolese students dissected phonetics in the morning, observed model lessons in the afternoon and spent evenings drilling vocabulary, determined, as Bola puts it, ‘to prove that a Brazzaville accent can also master Goethe’s idioms’.
Covid-19 restrictions briefly pushed classes online, yet the programme adapted, shipping webcams and textbooks across borders so that syntax debates could continue on Zoom, an experience the trainees say has already improved their ability to manage hybrid lessons back home.
Diplomacy and education partners align
Beyond the classroom, the initiative also served foreign-policy optics for both capitals. Berlin reinforces cultural diplomacy in Central Africa, while Brazzaville diversifies its linguistic portfolio, already rich in French and growing English training, towards a skill valued by engineering and logistics partners on the continent.
‘This is a strong sign for educational cooperation and future building,’ Seltmann told the audience, her remark echoed minutes later by a Ministry representative who thanked Germany for ‘investment that translates directly into classroom outcomes, not spreadsheets’.
Under the agreement, the new teachers enter the civil service payroll within weeks. They are expected to start in pilot lycées of Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire before rotating through regional hubs, a deployment plan designed to seed demand and create mentors for the next scholarship intake.
New teachers pledge classroom change
Speaking for the trio, Baleketa promised to ‘teach, motivate and innovate’, adding in crisp German that education remains the key to the future, an assertion that drew nods from INRAP experts keen to refresh classroom methodology after years of budget pressures.
He and his colleagues have already designed starter kits with role-play scenarios, Congolese folk tales translated into German and QR codes linking to pronunciation files recorded during their stay in Bonn; the material will be shared on the ministry’s new digital resource platform.
The graduates also plan a monthly podcast featuring students who switched from zero German to basic conversation, hoping the peer voices will counter the myth that the language is ‘too hard’ and encourage rural schools, where teacher shortages persist, to request remote sessions.
What pupils and parents can expect
For parents already calculating next year’s timetable, the Ministry signals that optional German may open in fifteen public secondary schools in September, subject to timetables being finalised in March and to the availability of textbooks currently in transit from Frankfurt.
Officials insist tuition will remain free in the public system; families will only need to budget for an exercise book and a modest contribution to photocopies, a cost that barely tops 2,000 FCFA per term according to the provisional circular sent to head teachers.
The ministry encourages pupils aiming at careers in engineering, tourism or aviation to sign up early, citing a World Bank brief that multilingual employees in Central Africa can command wages up to 25 percent higher than monolingual peers in export-oriented firms.
As the ceremony closed with a short film revisiting four years of late-night study sessions and first winter snow, the new teachers lingered for selfies, aware that their next photo op will be in front of a blackboard, chalk dust replacing confetti.
