Tour Nabemba

Tour Nabemba is impossible to miss — the tallest building in the Republic of Congo rises 106 metres above central Brazzaville in a cylindrical tower of stepped concrete floors. Built in 1986 during the socialist People's Republic, it serves as the headquarters of Elf Congo (now TotalEnergies Congo) and has become the most recognisable element of the city's skyline when viewed from the river or from Kinshasa across the water.

The tower is primarily an office building and not open for general visits, but it is worth seeing from the outside for its architectural ambition and for what it represents: a petro-state's attempt to stamp modernity onto a city that was built for a very different scale. The view from across the Congo River, where Nabemba and the Kinshasa towers face each other, is one of the stranger urban panoramas in Central Africa.

things to do sight architecture
A story
The Nabemba Tower was completed in 1986 at a cost that became emblematic of the country's economic mismanagement under the People's Republic. Named after the country's highest mountain, it rises 106 metres — the tallest building in the Republic of Congo — and is said to have cost more to maintain annually than most government ministries. An Atlas Obscura subject, it is regarded locally as both a source of civic pride and an expensive white elephant.