A Franco-Congolese actress trained in Paris, directed by France’s leading stage and screen names, has worked for a Central African production exactly once — on a self-financed film whose technical shortcomings its own director attributes to the absence of funding. The numbers. Two of eleven Central African states operate a film support fund. Regional seed...

Trajectories — Portrait No. 6 Every Cameroonian exporter who negotiates a letter of credit, writes “FOB Douala” into a contract, or signs an arbitration clause is applying rules drafted by the International Chamber of Commerce. Those rules are texts, written by people, in rooms, and revised on a schedule. Until June 2026 no African woman...

Trajectories — Portrait No. 4 Infrastructure is a rent asset. Airports, ports and power grids earn their returns from the absence of a substitute, not from competitive advantage — which is exactly why long-horizon capital wants them, and exactly why a weak regulator turns a partnership into a transfer of pricing power. Adebayo Ogunlesi built...

Trajectories — Portrait No. 3 Central African economies pay better for trading than for making. Importing a container requires working capital and a licence; building the factory requires energy, a supply chain, trained labour and capital you cannot get back if you are wrong. Célestin Tawamba trained as a financier, spent a decade pricing exactly...