Influential motivational speaker, life coach and Sports analyst Christophe Bongo has joined the Enspired platform as a contributor.
Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1971, Christophe traveled to South Africa in 1990 to further his studies in Chemical engineering. Upon completing his studies he stayed in the country that he had come to love and became a naturalised citizen.
He started his academic life as a student at Polytechnic University in Lubumbashi in 1988 as a 17-year-old. Two years later in 1990, he completed his undergraduate studies in Polytech sciences.
The same year, Mobutu Sese Seko, the then president of the DRC, ordered the military to indefinitely suspend all university activities in Lubumbashi after massive students violent protests, and Christophe then moved to South Africa started his adventure at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa in 1991.
This journey has taken him through very different stages of his life with each stage leaving an indelible mark on his life. It has helped shape him to the athlete, family man, the business professional and a confident coach that he is today.
“Initially, life was about battling to get good marks,” said Christophe recalling how he needed to first learn to speak, read and write a foreign language, English.
The drive of not failing and becoming financially independent were Christophe’s sole ambition. However he had no idea how that would unfold.
“The journey was not a smooth one, I had to navigate life alone as a black boy in a foreign land, while trying to communicate in a foreign language at a territory where racial discrimination was an institution,” said Christophe.
The pre-1994 life in South Africa forged his consciousness in human relationships. After liberation the experience culminated in him leading a life that was constantly lived in the public eye, 24/7, as a pro-footballer, TV personality and fashion model.
Beyond all the glamour and spotlight that Christophe’s journey depicts, it is also an untold journey of numerous business start-up hiccups. It depicts the constant struggles of entrepreneurship life (successes and failures) as well as the everyday challenges of being a loyal friend, a committed parent and a loving husband while at the same time managing public opinions of him as an outsider.
Fortunately Christophe has used all these struggles and experiences to equip him with the ability to contextualise all into a story that adds value to others (his audience).
Christophe is a former professional footballer, retired in 1998. He devoted much of his time and effort to developing greatly sought after skills in neuroscience. His collective life experience of adversity, reinvention in a foreign land, allowed him to develop an acute cultural intelligence combined with well-honed analytical aptitude gives him an unique advantage to network, adapt, speak, negotiate and motivate. As a speaker, writer and now contributor on the Enspired platform Christophe strives to inspire, empower and ignite people with his own stories of perseverance, courage, faith, perspectives and commitment. His approach in life is of continuous learning and the belief that “what he knows is not all that is”.
