What to Expect from 16th CEMAC Summit 2025 in Bangui?
Initially scheduled for August 2025, the 16th CEMAC Summit 2025 (#CEMAC2025) was postponed to 9 and 10 September 2025 to ensure ‘optimal participation’ as Gabon indicated a calendar conflict with its National Day. The capital of the Republic of Central Africa (RCA), Bangui, is the chosen venue for the Summit.
The #CEMAC consists of six countries in Central Africa which are mostly Francophone, although Cameroon considers itself bilingual and uses both French and English. The CEMAC member states are in alphabetical order: Cameroon, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of Central Africa.
The general mission of the CEMAC is to coordinate regional cooperation and strengthen regional cohesion. For this particular Summit, the items on the agenda include transnational connectivity, harmonization of regulatory framework and economic reforms, and monetary policies.
In particular, the landlocked countries of the Republic of Central Africa and Chad have long wanted to wished to enhance #connectivity to the sea. Similarly, the Central Africa Pipeline System (CAPS) has reached a trilateral consensus among CEMAC, APPO and CABEF in June 2025.
The CEMAC countries are rich in natural resources. Cameroon, Gabon, and Congo-Brazzaville all have large areas covered by forests. Gabon and Equatorial Guinea are exporters of petroleum, while Congo-Brazzaville has just started to develop its oil & gas sector. Unfortunately, the richness in resources has yet to translate into richness in livelihoods for the majority of people in the countries concerned.
This Summit is taking place in the context of the tariff policy initiated by US President Trump in order to ‘Make America Great Again (MAGA)’. In response, CEMAC must come up with coordinated policies to elevate CEMAC and weather global challenges.
The merger of CEMAC with CEEAC has made some progress and is expected to be one of the key points of discussion. The six CEMAC countries form a subset of the larger CEEAC, which is larger with 11 member states. For instance, DRC has world-class reserves of #CriticalMinerals such as cobalt, copper, and tantalum, but it is only a member of CEEAC but not of CEMAC. Therefore, one of the rationales for a merger is to enable greater leverage and higher impact, but many modalities still remain to be ironed out.
A ministerial-level meeting is scheduled to take place in Bangui on the 9th of September 2025. Then, on 10th September 2025, the heads of state or government will convene the Summit.