Gabon: President Oligui Nguéma and the quiet discipline of development
In the subdued turbulence of African transitions, few decisions speak as eloquently as a programmatic speech through their simplicity and scope. The commissioning of the Mayumba gas-fired power plant in the Nyanga region of Gabon falls into this category. It is not merely a technical event. It is a political act, a strategic marker. A major piece in the reform architecture undertaken by President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguéma since coming to power.
Through this infrastructure, inaugurated in January 2026, Gabon asserts a methodical break with old patterns: excessive centralization, territorial favoritism, unbalanced investments.
Mayumba, long relegated to the nation’s energy margins of the nation, now gains tangible, measurable, operational production capacity: 8.5 megawatts today, 21 megawatts tomorrow. Behind these figures lies a governance philosophy of territorial equity through action.
This project, driven by a rigorously structured partnership between the state, Gabon Power Company, and Périnco, translates a new grammar of power.
President Oligui Nguéma does not govern through spectacular announcements, but through a coherent sequence of structural decisions.
Here, energy becomes a lever for sovereignty, an instrument for economic emancipation, a foundation for productive transformation.
In an Africa too long assigned to importing its own needs, the choice of gas, a national resource, to fuel local development, reflects an assumed Pan-African strategy: to produce with its own resources, power its territories, stabilize its economies, and train its skills. It is through this value chain that real independence is rebuilt.
The Mayumba power plant is not a privilege granted; it is an institutional reparation. It signals the end of governance based on networks and political proximity.
Henceforth, investment follows the public interest, not patronage. Territory becomes a space of rights, not favors.
Under the leadership of President Oligui Nguéma’s leadership, the Gabonese state is reclaiming its strategic role. It plans. It arbitrates. It secures. It anticipates. Energy, water, infrastructure, youth entrepreneurship: all converge toward the same objective; the silent but determined rebuilding of the national pact.
Mayumba now lights up its streets. But, more profoundly, it illuminates a new political trajectory.
For a country is not liberated by slogans. It is liberated by kilowatts, roads, schools, and the constancy of political courage.
Jean-Robert TCHANDY
