Above the entrance to the towering oil ministry on a sleek boulevard in Gabon’s ocean-front capital Libreville hangs a huge banner that reads like a warning: “Oil will run out but innovation is forever”.
For nearly four decades, since the discovery of offshore fields in the early 1970s, oil has been the economic lifeblood of this small, central African country. It has brought billions of dollars in investment and accounts for 80 percent of exports.
But production from Gabon’s ageing fields has steadily declined for years. President Ali Bongo, who won a contested election in 2009 to succeed his father Omar, has launched a drive to reform and diversify the $20 billion economy.
During his father’s 41-year rule, Gabon was seen as a bastion of “Francafrique” – an opaque system by which French companies were handed plum contracts in exchange for security guarantees from the former colonial power.
“Bongo junior”, as many Gabonese still call the 55-year-old president, has striven to overhaul his country’s image and open it up to fresh sources of investment.
But five years into his term, there are signs that new industries are not growing quickly enough to compensate for falling oil revenues, placing a strain on public finances.
Elected with just over 40% of the vote, Bongo faces a stark choice as a fresh poll looms in two years.
He cannot afford to push through a planned $12 billion public investment programme while also funding the costly civil service, which his father used to as a way of distributing patronage.
“The fact that Ali Bongo has more financial commitments than his father puts him in a very difficult position,” said Ben Payton, senior Africa analyst at risk advisory firm Maplecroft. “Omar Bongo would have made the maintenance of patronage networks his first priority in times of economic difficulty.”
agencies
Leave a Reply