A huge crowd gathered on Sunday in the district of the Martyrs stadium in Kinshasa where a football match followed by a closing ceremony marked the end of the 9th Games of La Francophonie.
“Both the Martyrs stadium (with a capacity of 80,000 seats) and the People’s Palace (seat very close to the Parliament) are overflowing with people”, indicated at the start of the evening the organizers, asking the inhabitants, for reasons of safety, not to attempt to go to this area again.
From the afternoon, faced with an overwhelmed security service, the neighborhood was invaded by tens of thousands of people, many of whom were unable to access the stadium for the final match between Cameroon and Burkina Faso (2 -1), headed for the People’s Palace, hoping to find a concert or other activity there.
The Games of La Francophonie, opened on July 28, aroused enormous enthusiasm in Kinshasa, the largest French-speaking city in the world with approximately fifteen million inhabitants. “In general, everything is going well,” welcomed the director of the national games committee, Isidore Kwandja, on Friday evening, while acknowledging the difficulties “at the start”. The lack of water in some accommodations, the queue in the refectory, complicated transportation aroused complaints from some delegations upon their arrival.
The logistical problems were managed, if not settled little by little, and did not prevent the games from being held in conditions that surprised first and foremost the inhabitants of Kinshasa themselves, accustomed to dilapidated infrastructure, police “harassment” and streets strewn with rubbish.
Often as a family, they came in large numbers to attend athletics, wrestling, judo, basketball or table tennis events in stadiums and gymnasiums rehabilitated or built especially for these games. In total, twenty disciplines, sporting and cultural, were on the program.
Morocco leads the harvest of medals, with nearly sixty, followed by Romania and Cameroon, with about forty. Several Francophonie records have been broken in athletics.
According to Zeina Mina, director of the International Committee of the Games of La Francophonie (CIJF), this edition of the games, created in 1989 and organized in principle every four years, recorded more than 3,500 participants, including 1,810 athletes and artists who took part in the competitions. Thirty-seven countries were represented. The challenge has been “taken up”, it is part of the “Congolese miracle”, she says.
A miracle, because until their opening, doubt remained about the holding of the Games, which should have taken place in 2021 but were postponed twice, first because of the Covid-19, then in 2022 because nothing was not ready to welcome them.
Until the last minute, sites were still under construction. Faced with this, some participants, such as Quebec, which invoked safety and health reasons, decided not to compete or reduced the size of their delegations.
The Games were also preceded by a controversy over the presence of the Secretary General of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF), Louise Mushikiwabo. This one is Rwandan and the relations between Kinshasa and Kigali are execrable, the DRC reproaching Rwanda for supporting a rebellion which occupies part of its territory. She didn’t come in the end.
The atmosphere in the DRC is weighed down by this conflict in the East and the political climate is very tense with the approach of the presidential election in December. While it must precisely face large military expenses and finance the elections, the DR Congo has spent tens of millions of dollars in new infrastructures for the Francophonie games.
Often asked about their cost, the government prefers to emphasize that it is an investment for youth and development. According to its spokesman, Patrick Muyaya, “the image transmitted to the world” during these games “is priceless”. This “historic event (…) will remain engraved in the memories”, declared during the closing ceremony the Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi, candidate for his re-election in December.
