Isidore Mvouba

Isidore Mvouba
Isidore Mvouba in 2007
Prime Minister of Congo-Brazzaville
In office 7 January 2005 – 15 September 2009
President	Denis Sassou Nguesso
Preceded by	Position abolished
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Personal details
Born	1954 (age 62–63) Kindamba, French Equatorial Africa (now Congo-Brazzaville)
Political party	PCT

Isidore Mvouba (born 1954) is a Congolese politician who was Prime Minister of Congo-Brazzaville from 2005 to 2009. He is a member of the Congolese Labour Party (PCT, or Parti congolais du travail) and held key positions under President Denis Sassou Nguesso from 1997 to 2016.

Mvouba was Director of the Cabinet of the Head of State from 1997 to 1999, Minister of Transport from 1999 to 2005 (with responsibility for coordinating government action beginning in 2002), and Prime Minister from January 2005 to September 2009. After his post of Prime Minister was eliminated, he instead served as Minister of State for Transport, responsible for coordinating ministries relating to infrastructure, from 2009 to 2012. Subsequently, he was Minister of State for Industrial Development from 2012 to 2016.

Mvouba was born at Kindamba, located in the Pool Region, and became a railways engineer, working at the Congo-Ocean Railway (Chemin de fer Congo-Océan) beginning in 1976. Unlike most southerners, he continued to support President Sassou Nguesso when multiparty politics was introduced in the early 1990s. When Sassou Nguesso stood as the PCT's candidate in the August 1992 presidential election, Mvouba served as his campaign director; Sassou Nguesso was badly defeated, placing third in the election. Pascal Lissouba, who won the election and succeeded Sassou Nguesso as President, invited Mvouba to take up a ministerial post in the government formed after the election, but Mvouba refused. Subsequently, on 25 December 1992, he was appointed as Minister of Youth and Sports in the power-sharing government of Prime Minister Claude Antoine Dacosta, which was to serve until a new parliamentary election was held in 1993.

Mvouba was spokesman of the pro-Sassou Nguesso United Democratic Forces during the June–October 1997 civil war. The civil war resulted in Sassou Nguesso's return to power in October 1997, and Mvouba was appointed as Director of the Cabinet of the Head of State (with the rank of Minister) at the end of the same month. He held that post until being appointed as Minister of Transport, Civil Aviation, and the Merchant Marine on 12 January 1999.