Agence Congolaise d’Information (ACI)

Agence Congolaise d’Information (ACI) is the national state press agency of the Republic of the Congo, created by Loi n°40/61 of 20 June 1961 and headquartered in Brazzaville. ACI describes itself as Congo’s official public news agency, with a mission that includes producing national news content and distributing world news obtained through agreements and partnerships with other agencies. The agency emerged from the foundations of the former Agence France Presse (AFP) bureau in Brazzaville, in a city that had served, prior to independence, as the capital of French Equatorial Africa (AEF) and of Free France during the Second World War.

Media assets

News agency: ACI

Ownership and governance

ACI was created by Loi n°40/61 of 20 June 1961, in the months immediately following Congolese independence from France on 15 August 1960, taking over the premises and technical equipment of the former AFP bureau in Brazzaville. According to the agency’s own institutional history, ACI was initially established as a direction centrale with the prerogatives of an autonomous structure endowed with civil personality, and operating under commercial rules. The agency’s legal status subsequently evolved: ACI became a public service, and was later erected as a direction générale by Décret n°98-385 of 9 November 1998, becoming formally a technical organ assisting the Minister of Communication in matters of information. The current framework text in application is Décret n°2003-222 of 21 August 2003 on the attribution and organisation of the Direction Générale of ACI. A 1982–1986 quinquennial plan and an associated Canadian-funded rehabilitation project significantly upgraded ACI’s infrastructure and technical equipment in Brazzaville and across all Congolese departments at the time, although the agency itself notes that much of this infrastructure has since fallen into disuse.

ACI’s current Director General is Olga Rachelle Mangouandza, installed in her functions on 1 June 2022 by Antoine Oviebo Ethai, then Director of Cabinet of the Minister of Communication and Media, after her nomination by the Council of Ministers. The handover ceremony at the agency’s headquarters took place with outgoing interim Director General Philippe Youhou, who had held the role for approximately eleven months. The current Director of Information is François Richard Kandza, and the Commercial Director is Rodolph Donalde Moukassa Mamoni.

In a June 2023 interview published on the ACI portal, Mangouandza publicly described ACI as institutionally weakened upon her arrival, citing the need to rehabilitate the agency’s central building, equip it with modern information-and-communication technologies, relaunch the print edition of the daily bulletin, train staff, address the personnel deficit, and improve conditions for the departmental directorates.

The supervisory ministry is the Ministry of Communication and Media, headed by Minister and government spokesperson Thierry Lézin Moungalla, confirmed in his role in the government formed on 24 April 2026, on the proposal of Prime Minister Anatole Collinet Makosso; Moungalla had also been confirmed in the same role in the January 2025 government reshuffle.

The Republic of the Congo’s political system is dominated by President Denis Sassou-N’Guesso of the Parti Congolais du Travail (PCT), who has been in power since 1979 with a single interruption between 1992 and 1997. President Sassou-N’Guesso was re-elected in the 15 March 2026 presidential election; the Constitutional Court confirmed the result on 28 March 2026 at 94.90% of the suffrages exprimés and the presidential investiture took place on 16 April 2026 in Brazzaville.

Source of funding and budget

ACI is funded primarily through state budget allocations channelled via the Ministry of Communication and Media. ACI’s founding mission includes paid provision of information to users, and the agency has a commercial function led by the Commercial Director, but no detailed current budget, audited accounts, or revenue breakdown was identified in publicly accessible sources. The agency’s institutional finances have been a recurring source of public concern: in her June 2023 interview, Director General Olga Rachelle Mangouandza cited chronic personnel shortages, the inadequacy of operating resources, and the need for additional financial means from the government to permit the agency to “take flight again”.

Editorial independence

There are no statutory provisions, regulatory mechanisms, or external evaluation procedures that protect or assess ACI’s editorial independence from executive influence. Our interviews with journalists in the country conducted in November 2025 indicate that ACI’s output is heavily concentrated on official government, presidential, and ministerial coverage, with limited evidence of independent investigative reporting or opposition-focused accountability journalism.

AI and digital policy

ACI maintains an active digital corporate presence at aci.cg, updated regularly with categorised content covering politics, economy, society, culture, sport, education, environment, and international affairs. The agency also operates a Facebook page, Twitter, and YouTube channel. ACI’s institutional materials compare its mission to that of major international and African press agencies, including the Agence France Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Xinhua, PANA, NAN, JANA, ACP, and ANGOP, while also acknowledging that the agency has lost competitiveness and requires modernisation.

ACI has been a member of the Atlantic Federation of African Press Agencies (FAAPA) since 2014, and Director General Olga Rachelle Mangouandza was re-elected as Second Vice-President of FAAPA at the 9th FAAPA General Assembly held in Marrakech on 28–29 January 2026, under the continuing presidency of Fouad Arif, Director General of the Maghreb Arab Press Agency (MAP). At the same Marrakech assembly, ACI signed three cooperation agreements, with MAP (Morocco), the Agence gabonaise de presse (AGP-Gabon), and the Agence guinéenne de presse (AGP-Guinée), providing for mutual information-sharing and broader access to multimedia content including photographs, videos, audio, and infographics.

No publicly available ACI policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, or content provenance frameworks such as C2PA was identified.

May 2026