Gabon: Building the future through local production, Oligui Nguema’s sovereignist gamble
In Gabon, the agricultural question is no longer relegated to the margins of political discourse. It has become a structuring pillar of the state rebuilding initiative led by President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema. The allocation of over 2.7 billion CFA francs in support of poultry farms in the Estuaire region reflects this deliberate strategic choice: to make food sovereignty a concrete foundation of national sovereignty.
In a continent long constrained by import dependency, this decision merits rigorous political examination.
The presidential visit to poultry farms is not merely a gesture of proximity. It reveals a method of governance that starts from productive realities, observes existing capacities, and structures public support around committed national actors.
By highlighting Gabonese entrepreneurs who produce, invest, and create value, Oligui Nguéma breaks with a culture of administrative rent-seeking and restores the centrality of labor.
This sober yet firm stance restores political dignity to the rural and productive sectors, long overlooked in development strategies.
The financing plan announced through the BCEG signals an institutional shift. Substantial preferential-rate credits directed toward real production, tied to clear performance requirements and timelines, mark a break from the diffuse and ineffective support policies that have often fueled debt without impact.
By targeting poultry farming a sector with high social and economic returns, the Head of state aligns his actions with a strategy of import substitution, anticipating the ban on imported poultry meat by 2027. This move is not protectionist by dogma, but sovereignist by rationality.
This policy fully embodies a contemporary Pan-African vision: to produce what we consume, secure food supply chains, and restore to African nations control over their strategic choices.
In this way, Oligui Nguéma joins a new generation of African leaders who no longer theorize sovereignty but build it through precise, measurable economic acts rooted in local territories.
Gabon is becoming a discreet yet serious laboratory for a strategic state; one that plans, finances, and accompanies without stifling.
Beyond poultry farming, what emerges is a governing philosophy: a leadership that does not promise abundance, but organizes the national capacity to produce it.
And perhaps it is here, in this silent rigor and this resolute verticality, that the mark of African leaders destined to lastingly shape the political history of the continent can be found.
Eric Nzeuhlong
