CEMAC agreed free movement of people almost a decade ago and has a common external tariff older than most of its citizens. Its members still trade more with Europe and Asia than with each other. Why? The Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa has six members, one currency, one central bank and a common...

Borrow against tomorrow’s barrels to pay today’s bills. Chad did it, Congo did it, Gabon did it again in April. The mechanism is legal, expensive and almost impossible to see from the outside. An oil-backed loan is simple in principle. A state, or its national oil company, receives cash now from a commodity trader or...

The largest refinery in Africa sits 600 kilometres from Douala by sea. Central Africa imports nearly all its refined fuel. On paper, the match is obvious. In practice, almost nothing has changed. Since the fire that crippled Cameroon’s SONARA refinery in 2019, the country has imported refined products. Chad refines a modest volume at Djarmaya....

Cameroon has added the largest hydropower plant in its history. Households still count their outages in hours per day. The gap between generation and supply is where the money goes missing. Central Africa’s electricity problem is usually described as a shortage of generation. That description is increasingly wrong, and Cameroon is the clearest case. The...

A scored ranking of ten Central African banks on SME and young-entrepreneur finance — and an account of what the score cannot see No bank in Central Africa publishes the five figures that would settle the question: approval rate, median ticket size, share of the loan book held by firms under three years old, share...

Commercial Bank Cameroun spent seven years under provisional administration. NFC Bank spent twelve. IDEV never came out at all. On 11 September 2026, NOFIA S.A. walked out after twelve months. The interesting question is not whether that is impressive. It is why it worked — and whether it holds. At a glance InstitutionNouvelle Financière Africaine...

United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc has announced the appointment of Mr. Emmanuel N. Nnorom as Group Chairman, ushering in a new chapter of strategic leadership for one of Africa’s leading financial institutions. The appointment brings to the helm a highly accomplished corporate leader whose distinguished career spans more than four decades across banking, finance,...

United Bank for Africa Plc has announced that Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, CFR, Group Chairman of UBA, will retire from the Board of Directors of UBA on 21 August 2026, upon the completion of the 12-year tenure limit prescribed for Non-Executive Directors of Banks by the Central Bank of Nigeria. At its meeting held on...

On 13 and 14 October 2026, the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge in London will become, for two days, the epicentre of capital flowing into Africa. AFSIC – Investing in Africa – returns for an edition shaping up to be one of the densest ever organised, at a moment when the continent is redrawing the map of its...