In a crumbling building in Brazzaville, thousands of deteriorating tape reels hold an irreplaceable record of central African history—and a small group of volunteers is racing against time to save them. Since 2019, filmmaker Hassim Tall Boukambou and fellow archivists have been cleaning, cataloguing, and preserving footage from Tele Congo, the first television channel to broadcast south of the Sahara, founded in 1962. The tapes capture everything from independence-era news broadcasts to Stalinist-style political trials, concerts, and sporting events dating back to the 1920s. However, decades of neglect, humidity, and crumbling infrastructure now threaten the survival of this audiovisual treasure. The team hopes to eventually digitize the collection with French support—preserving living history for a continent whose young population deserves to know where it came from.
Africanews
