Gabon’s President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema says the country will no longer export its raw materials but will transform them to finished goods to boost the local economy, in a strategic economic policy shift.
Addressing the nation on August 30, 2025, exactly two years since he ousted President Ali Bongo in a coup and ended decades of the Bongo family rule, he stated that move aimed to foster economic sovereignty and create jobs for Gabonese.
“We may have a flag, a national anthem, a constitution, but if we do not control our economy, we will never be truly free,” President Oligui Nguema stated.
“Controlling our economy requires the local transformation of our natural resources, in order to create added value, generating jobs and wealth.”
The president outlined a vision to end Gabon’s role as a raw material supplier for global markets.
“Gabon can no longer continue to be an endless well from which everything is extracted, without any real benefit for the Gabonese people,” he said.
“From now on, we must transform our wood into furniture, our oil into refined fuel, our ores into precious metals and alloys, our gold into finished jewelry, our cocoa into Gabonese chocolate, our marble into tiles, and our potash into fertilizer. We will no longer be exporters of raw materials, but producers of transformed wealth.”
Breaking Cycle of Raw Material Exports
Gabon’s new policy addresses a key challenge facing Africa, where many nations, despite being rich in natural resources, export raw materials like oil, timber, and minerals to Western countries and China, only to import finished goods at costly rates.
According to the African Development Bank, Africa accounts for over 30 percent of global mineral reserves but captures less than 5 percent of the value-added processing market.
This has caused economic dependency, with countries like Gabon exporting crude oil, manganese, and timber while importing refined petroleum, machinery, and consumer goods.
Gabon, a Central African nation of just 2.3 million people, has long relied on oil, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of its GDP and 80 percent of export revenues.
Despite having this natural wealth, over 30 percent of Gabonese live below the poverty line, an issue President Oligui Nguema aims to resolve by prioritizing local industrialization.
“In the Fifth Republic, ‘GABON FIRST,’ which implies national preference, must not be a mere slogan, but a reality that friendly countries must accept, in compliance with our laws and regulations,” he stated.
A Vision for Gabon’s Sovereignty
The president framed the 2023 coup as “the first step in a long journey towards the complete sovereignty of our nation.”
Apart from economic transformation, President Nguema said he would strengthen internal security and territorial integrity by boosting defence spending.
“We will therefore modernize our defense tool by increasing the budget allocated to the defense and security forces, in order to equip them with the latest generation of equipment and strengthen their training,” he said.
He also called for cultivating “patriotism, unity, sacrifice, and peace—values that characterize the soul of our Nation.”
Gabon’s policy shift echoes efforts by African countries to break free from the colonial models of resource extraction.
Countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Ghana have also pushed to process raw materials locally.
They however face problems like inadequate infrastructure, limited capital, and global market pressures.
