The Bia So Mengong festival is a nugget that is enshrined with height in the gold bar of sustainable development that is culture.
The theme of the 4th edition of the Bia So Mengong festival has definitively left the abstract field of the mere idea to become a massively appreciated, empirically lived action.
On July 12, 2025, the opening day of the 4th edition of the festival, guests from all walks of life saw the desire to work together, the conviction to consider differences or, better, to integrate them into a dynamic where diversity does not mean adversity, but the richness of infinite possibilities.
We saw the streets of Mengong transformed into a giant boulevard where each avenue is an open path to the celebration of the genius of an event that federates energies.
Do we need to mention the enthusiasm read in the admiring and dreamy gaze of each resident? Is it necessary to put a word on the radiant smile of each exhibitor installed in the festival village, located at the Mengong high school? What word to express the strength of diversity, set to music, in step and in harmony by the genius of each child, an emerging artist to tell the truth, selected for the great multicultural and multinational parade, which was greeted with thunderous applause?
The people, what do I say, the world has seen in every articulation and every strap, the desire to bring together, to share, to federate talents.
The world admired the gesture of the heart of a promoter who, more than ever, knows that one will never have enough of a life to live one's own life to the fullest, but that making the other live through an outstretched hand may, in the end, be the only way to live a thousand lives within the tight framework of this too ephemeral life.
Then, 560 young volunteers will have been active. They are members of the staff in the oven and in the mill. These are authorities from the highest summit of culture, artists validated by the Francophonie, traditional authorities, craftsmen and other populations who will, each in their own way, have given their energy for an opening ceremony that the trees will still speak, even when time has suspended its flight.
And because it takes everything and everyone to move forward, the communities of Gabon, CAR, Nigeria, Congo and Equatorial Guinea also associated their rhythms with the great orchestra of the parade. A parade, it must be said, performed to the live music of an orchestra where the balafon, castanets, tam-tams and drums were able to harmonize finely with the trumpets and other saxophones to offer festival-goers a melodious and pleasant delight.
Do you need an end note? Perhaps after pointing out that we witnessed an opening match kicked off by the Honourable Céline Mendoua and whose score was 3 goals to 0 in favor of Fortissimo, stronger than ever against the Veterans of Nemeyong without any real adversity. The evening welcomed a beautiful performance by the artist Blacky Star, present, strong, adulated.
What to remember in the end? Simply, and this is to borrow from Mr. Armand Abanda Maye, Technical Advisor n°1 at MINAC: "The Bia So Mengong festival is a nugget that is enshrined with height in the gold bar of sustainable development that is culture."
The rest promises to be ever richer, for this culture fair which is off for two weeks (from July 12 to 26, 2025).