At the end of 2023, Congo-Brazzaville suffered the worst floods in its recent history. Rivers burst their banks in unprecedented proportions, causing considerable damage: 1.79 million people were affected, one in 12 Congolese needed humanitarian assistance. Likouala, the department furthest from the capital, was also the most affected. RFI special envoys went there in September 2024 with a UNICEF team.
To reach the banks of the Oubangui in the Likouala department, from Brazzaville, you must first drive 800 km to Ouesso, on the Cameroonian border, cross the Sangha River by ferry, then take a six-hour drive on a red laterite road through the equatorial forest.
From Bétou, some villages can be reached by road. Others can be reached by canoe, such as Ikpengbele, where during previous floods, water invaded everything.
“We could travel around the village in a canoe,” says Bongo Abdoulaye, its chief. “We haven’t seen floods like this here since 1953. Our parents lost their livestock back then. We grew up without experiencing this kind of disaster.” Then in 2019, we experienced major flooding and since then, every year, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, we have been subjected to flooding. And given the current level [in September 2024, Editor's note] we are sure that we will be flooded again this year."
The last time, the waters of the Oubangui took more than a month and a half to recede. For several weeks, many residents had no choice but to take refuge in the forest, like Jean-Faustin Massimo, his two wives and their eleven children: "We spent a month and twenty days there. We built small shacks in the hills. It was very painful, we had no bed, no tarpaulins. We were in the rain, with mosquitoes, snakes, pests, scorpions... The children slept under the stars, and we had nothing to cover them with. »
43,000 students deprived of school throughout Congo
Children deprived of school for weeks. According to UNICEF, the schooling of more than 43,000 students was interrupted throughout Congo during the floods last year.
On the health front, nearly 480,000 inhabitants throughout Congo needed immediate help to have access to drinking water, as in the Camètre district of Bétou where the rising waters made the well in front of which Dr. Hermann Didi Ngossaki, health manager at UNICEF Congo, is standing unusable. "There was mud, feces, debris that got into it," he explains. "While it was being rehabilitated, it was necessary to distribute chlorine tablets and show how to make the water drinkable to avoid diseases as much as possible."
Since then, the well has been cleaned and raised. Georges Nikoué is now the chairman of the management committee. He says he is affected by the memory of the water reaching his hip in his house: "I lost precious documents, books that my father had passed on to me." However, he does not plan to settle elsewhere: "This is where I was born. I want to stay. We have to fight against these floods, by channeling the city or the neighborhood."
Concerns as new rainy season approaches
In the waters of the Oubangui, still calm on this September morning, residents are washing and doing their laundry. Marème Bemba, a facilitator for the NGO EEA (Water and Sanitation for Africa), is watching the scene with concern. “Do you see that woman there? She has water up to her mid-thighs. While three months ago, where she is, there was no water,” she emphasizes.
A little further on, boatmen are loading a cargo ship under the gaze of the head of the port of Bétou: “Unfortunately, we don’t have a low-water gauge to measure the water level here. There are only some at Impfondo [the capital of the Likouala department, editor’s note].” Another resident, a trader known locally as Koumerou, is categorical: “We were born in Bétou, we grew up here.” Every morning, we see how the water rises. The water is already too high. When the rains come, it will start again. We will be flooded." For him, the aid provided by the authorities and NGOs last year is insufficient: "They bring us rice, sponges, but that does not protect us. We need machinery to build canals, diversions."
Awareness on a national scale
What the inhabitants observe with the naked eye on the banks of the Oubangui, Alain Loumouamou confirms. Head of the studies, research and applications office at the meteorology department of Congo, he has just returned from the 19th Central African climate forecast forum held in September in Douala, Cameroon. He advocates for the establishment of an early warning system throughout the country: "Weather instruments must be installed in the departments, such as rain gauges, a boundary marking system, and beacons to check for rising water levels. In the Likouala department, precipitation conditions above the seasonal norm are expected for October, November and December. We are likely to experience the same scenarios as in 2023. With the increase in temperature today linked to climate change, we will never be spared from these natural phenomena." An awareness accelerated by the scale of last year's floods. In Likouala, local authorities are encouraging residents to move away from the banks.
Humanitarian actors are also preparing to avoid being caught off guard. At the government level, in Brazzaville, Marie-Cécile Mboukou Kimbatsa, Minister of Social Affairs, Solidarity and Humanitarian Action, talks about thinking about the longer term. "We can no longer project ourselves into resilience, we project ourselves into adaptation," she assures. "We need to think about housing, about the type of agricultural practices that we are going to implement in these areas since the populations do not want to move. We need to be able to set up sustainable health and education infrastructures and to be able to channel water to allow the residential areas to dry out. But all of this requires very large investments. These are not investments that a State can support alone. »
In the absence of short-term solutions, the resignation of the poorest
Back in Likouala. In Boyélé-Port, a two-and-a-half-hour drive south of Bétou, village chief Sylvestre Doli is preparing to call on residents to evacuate. “We hear about global warming. We don’t really understand what it is. But we see that when it should be cooler, it’s cooler. When it shouldn’t rain, it rains heavily and we lose our crops. We suffer, but we don’t have the solution,” he sums up.
Several residents of Likouala say that since the floods at the end of 2023, children start crying when it rains. Léonie Niamazongo, 62, says she herself was very affected by last year’s flood, but resigned. “Last time, when the water rose and we had to leave, we first managed with the cassava tubers we had left, then we used our savings to feed the children,” she says. “And then, after a while, there was almost nothing left. I have eight children and twenty grandchildren. Since the floods last year, I have had stomach pains, I feel tense. When I see the waters rising, my heart beats very fast.”
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