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ARREARS, THE OTHER DEBT FIGURE ! LES ARRIÉRÉS, L’AUTRE CHIFFRE DE LA DETTE !

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  English version  The figure has been making the rounds for a few days: Gabon's debt arrears reached CFA 1,198.8 billion at the end of June 2026, up nearly 10% in six months. In other words, the State keeps piling up bills it cannot pay on time, and the backlog keeps growing. A debt that keeps rising The background is well known. According to the bulletin of the Directorate General of Debt (DGD), public debt reached CFA 8,780 billion at the end of 2025, a 23% increase in one year.  Domestic debt drove this rise, jumping 57% to CFA 4,653 billion: the State borrowed heavily on the regional CEMAC market, often from banks based outside Gabon. The same bulletin put arrears at CFA 459.5 billion at the time, already CFA 193 billion more than a year earlier. A figure that raises questions This is where the numbers don't add up. If arrears grew by about 10% in six months to reach CFA 1,198.8 billion, they must have been close to CFA 1,090 billion at the end of 2025. That is more ...
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TWO DIVERGENT READINGS OF BGFI BANK! DEUX LECTURES DIVERGENTES DE LA BGFI BANK!

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  English version   The contrast between Jeune Afrique and Africa Intelligence in their coverage of the highly controversial BGFI Bank is quite striking. Jeune Afrique mainly covers BGFI through the lens of its supposed performance: its annual ranking regularly puts the group at the top of CEMAC banks. That is also the current tone. The IPO on May 7, 2026 raised more than 45 billion CFA francs from 7,601 investors, and a second phase, running from September 15 to October 15, 2026, aims to raise the free float to 10%, up from 3.85% today. Africa Intelligence, by contrast, looks behind the scenes at shareholding, politics and governance. In late 2024, the newsletter reported that a letter from presidential adviser Pierre Duro demanded that Delta Synergie hand over its 9.91% stake in the holding company to the State, and that CBON was considering appointing Oyima as a minister, a disguised form of ousting. That is partly what happened: Oyima was appointed Minister of State for th...
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HOW CAN SOCIETIES THAT CELEBRATE SUCH SPIRITS NOT MOVE FORWARD? COMMENT VOULEZ VOUS QUE DES SOCIÉTÉS QUI CÉLÈBRENT DE TELS ESPRITS N’AVANCENT PAS?

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MP Ella Oyono, a meritocrat far from Gabon! Le député Ella Oyono, un méritocrate loin du Gabon!

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English version  He left in 2001 to study and was supposed to come back to teach. On October 5, 2026, Dieudonné Ella Oyono won 12,983 votes, or 39% of the ballots cast, and with a lead of nearly 6,000 votes, the Parti Québécois candidate won his first term in Quebec's National Assembly. His journey begins here at home. He studied economics at UOB, where he earned a DEA (advanced postgraduate degree), then, at 27, left Gabon to pursue a PhD in economics at UQAM. Nothing was handed to him. A Parti Québécois activist since 2012, he ran in Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne in 2018, without success. He persevered. In November 2019, he became the first African to lead the party, founded in 1968. Seven years later, it was the voters who chose him. His path raises questions. How many UOB graduates could have served their country, had they found at home a system that rewards work rather than connections Quebec recognized what Gabon failed to keep. Ella Oyono's success makes us proud, but it also ...
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Appointments in Gabon: Still Trapped by Geopolitics in 2026! Nominations au Gabon : en 2026, toujours prisonniers de la géopolitique!

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English version  On October 16, GabonReview reported on a WhatsApp group in which senior Fang civil servants from the Estuaire province denounce their exclusion from the top levels of government. According to them, the latest cabinet reshuffle cut their community's presence in government from four ministers to two, and they no longer hold a single director-general or ministry secretary-general post. Beyond this particular case, the affair says something broader, and more troubling: in 2026, we are still counting positions by province and by ethnic group. An unwritten rule that everyone applies In Gabon, everyone knows about "geopolitics," even though no text defines it. The principle is simple: every province and every major community must see its people represented in ministries, the civil service and state-owned companies. Made into a method of government under Omar Bongo Ondimba, this unwritten rule was meant to contain rivalries in a country where no single group can ...
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