On May 22, 2025, Chrisnah R. Mfouhou and Sara Pacchiarotti presented a talk titled “The noun class system of Ndunga (“Ubangi”, Mbaic) from a Niger-Congo perspective” at the 2025 Comparative Niger-Congo workshop which took place at LLACAN, CNRS (Villejuif, France). The program of the workshop can be found here.
On April 19, Sara Pacchiarotti and Paulin Baraka Bose presented the results of Paulin’s 2024 fieldwork mission on Furu (fuu) (Central Sudanic, northwestern DRC) at the fourth meeting of the Princeton Phonology Forum (PɸF 2025) (Princeton University, New Jersey, USA) with a talk titled “The lexicon and phonology of Fulu: insights into the population history of a small-scale Central Sudanic language spoken in northwestern DR Congo“
The theme of PɸF 2025 was Sound Patterns and Human History. The workshop brought together scholars whose research examines the connection between human history, events, and migration (as evidenced from oral history, archeology, genetics, etc.) and large-scale areal zones of sound system convergence.
Between January 10th and February 1st, the CongUbangi team conducted its first archaeological mission to the Central African Republic.
The archaeology team, made up of Peter R. Coutros, Lucien Nguerede, and Henri Zana joined Professor Karen Lupo and Dave Schmitt from Southern Methodist University, and Emmanuelle Namkomana and Lira Bangué – two Master’s students from the University of Bangui – on a joint survey and excavation campaign along the Mpoko River north of Bangui. The joint teams identified numerous previously undocumented sites, including pottery and lithics scatters, and excavating four new trenches.
From there, the CongUbangi team traveled southwest to Mbaiki in order to expand the scope of the survey and excavation campaign. Peter, Lucien, and Henri documented more than a dozen archaeological sites, including ancient settlement and iron production locations. In addition to the archaeological work, the team conducted preliminary ethnographical interviews with metallurgists in the Mbaiki region. These artisans combined traditional and modern techniques in their work, which will provide much needed data on comparative forms of smelting and forging.
As this was the first CongUbangi mission to the Central African Republic, our team also met with Professor Gérard Gresenguet, Rector of the University of Bangui, to discuss current and future collaborations with Ghent University. Peter also gave a lecture to interested students and staff of the university about the research that the team was currently conducting, as well as the future plans for the project. In order to further incorporate the local communities into our research, Henri Zana conducted a radio interview with the local Mbaiki radio station, explaining the goals and methods of the archaeology portion of the project. In addition, Ambassador Patricia Mahoney chaired a roundtable with our team, Professor Rock Emmanual Youili-Mognaman (University of Bangui), Professor Bernard Simiti (University of Bangui), and representatives of the Ministry of Culture and the Boganda National Museum. These meetings have laid the foundations for a long-term partnership between the CongUbangi project, Ghent University, and the political and academic institutions across the Central African Republic invested in cultural patrimony.
On November 27 2024, linguistics doctoral students Chrisnah Renaudot Mfouhou and Paulin Baraka Bose presented preliminary results of their respective fieldwork missions of 2024 at the weekly seminars of LLACAN (Langage, Langues, et Cultures d’Afrique (UMR 8135 CNRS – INALCO – EPHE). For more information see: https://llacan.cnrs.fr/blog/?p=2887
The CongUbangi team was generously given the opportunity to peruse the Centre de Documentation André-Georges Haudricourt library at LLACAN. We were able to find many “hidden” linguistic sources on Bantu, Ubangi and Central Sudanic languages spoken in the Congo-Ubangi watershed area.
On August 29th Peter Coutros (UGent), Igor Matonda (UNIKIN), Henri Zana (UGent/Université de Bangui), Lucien Pierre Nguerede (UGent/Université de Bangui) and Sara Pacchiarotti (UGent) presented their research on “Central African archaeology of the northern Bantu borderlands: Initial Results of the CongUbangi research project” at the annual European Association of Archaeologists conference in Rome. The presentation was in The Archaeology of Ancient Borderscapes: Multiple Approaches, New Paradigms session and focused on the results from the team’s recent archaeological and ethnoarchaeological fieldwork in the Sud-Ubangi province of the DRC. The preliminary results revolved around:
From July 6 to August 3, Prof. Jean Pierre Donzo carried out linguistic fieldwork within the framework of the CongUbangi project in areas surrounding Lisala and Bumba, two locations in the Mongala province of the DRC. He collected lexical and grammatical data on ten Bantu varieties, namely Budza-liye, Limpesa, Lingbele, Lipoto, Eliele, Elupi-Dando, Ebudza-Bondunga, Egbuta, Ebudza-yamolota, and Ndobo. Some of these are spoken by so-called gens d’eau, that is, linguistically heterogeneous small-scale groups of speakers whose main subsistence activities revolve around swamp forests in the Mongala region.
From July 6 to August 18, Chrisnah Renaudot Mfouhou will be conducting linguistic fieldwork on Ndunga, an enclaved Mbaic (Ubangi) variety spoken in several villages around Lisala in the Mongala province of the DRC. In this first fieldwork mission, Chrisnah will focus on phonetics, phonology as well as features and behavior of the noun phrase. Genetic data on Ndunga speakers will also be collected.
