Poto-Poto is one of the oldest central popular quarters of Brazzaville. Founded towards 1900 in the place of not very salubrious marshes and the pre-colonial locality of Okila, it is planned in 1911 by the administrators Latapie and Butel, with checkerboard plan characteristic and model allotments for " Africains". Around the Common House (1943, Erell arch.) remain some boxes of this time out of bricks with sheet roof of four sides.

With its extensions of Moungali, Ouenzé, Talangaï or Moukondo, Poto-Poto is an immense zone of mixing of the ethnos groups of North-Congo driven out towards Brazzaville by the rural migration. From 1942 and entry of the autochtones in the management of the zones known as " africaines" , this district profited from the work of some remarkable local policies, like Raphaël Gambali.

Since 1980 and disasters of the war " civile" of 1997, high buildings appear in the oldest part, around the Roundabout of Free France inaugurated by Jacques Chirac in 1996. Not far, the Basilica Holy-Anne of Congo, the most important monument of Brazzaville, very touched by the engagements, awaits a restoration which delays. Inaugurated in 1949, it is the architectural symbol of the city, beside the stage Felix Eboué whose superb monumental platform (1944) must to the same architect, Roger Erell (1907-1986).

In this district in 1951 is founded, by Pierre Lods, the École of the Painters of Mangrove swamp mud, which saw hatching of many Congolese pictorial talents, like Zigoma, Gotène, Iloki, Malonga… This school had since 1952 an international audience and a notable influence on those of Dakar and Lubumbashi. After one period of collapse it tends to reappear today with new talents.

The Old Mangrove swamp mud, around the street Mfoa, has era magnificiently evoked by the Congolese great writer Tchicaya U Tam' if in its novel " These so soft fruits of the tree with pain" . To also read " The sun left to Me Pemba" of Sylvain Bemba.

The current administrator-Mayor of Mangrove swamp mud is Adolphe Elemba.