Former Congolese Prime Minister Henri Lopes, considered one of the finest writers who created Congo “the Latin Quarter of Central Africa,” died on Thursday in France, aged 86, his family confirmed in Brazzaville on Friday.
“Henri died on Thursday, November 2 at the Foch hospital in Suresnes (near Paris), carried away by illness,” the statement said.
A free-spirited man who wrote about the contemporary history of Africa, he was the author of numerous works, including novels such as “Le Pleurer-rire”, “Ma grand-mère bantoue et mes ancêtres les Gaulois”, “Sans tam-tam”, “Il est déjà demain”…
Henri Lopes was born in Kinshasa (then Léopoldville, in the former Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1937 to a Portuguese father and a Plateaux mother from central Congo-Brazzaville.
He taught history at the Ecole Normale Supérieure d’Afrique Centrale in Brazzaville, currently known as the Université Marien Ngouabi, after studying in Brazzaville, Bangui, Nantes (western France), and Paris.
Between 1973 and 1975, he served as Prime Minister under President Marien Ngouabi’s Marxist-Leninist administration.
He worked at Unesco as the deputy director for Africa in the 1980s and 1990s before being appointed Congo’s ambassador to France in 1998, a position he held for 17 years.