Gabon, Cameroon and Four Neighbours Back Shared Energy Data System

Six Central African countries, led by Cameroon and Gabon, face a basic problem: nobody reliably knows their power output. At a meeting in Libreville, their energy ministers backed a shared system to collect and publish CEMAC energy data.

CEMAC, the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, links Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and the Central African Republic. Its roughly 67 million people, about as many as live in Britain, share the CFA franc, a currency pegged to the euro.

The region is rich in oil, gas and river power, yet short of electricity. The new plan is meant to give governments, lenders and investors one set of trustworthy numbers.

What the ministers approved

Energy ministers from the six states met on Friday, 25 September, at the Palais des Congrès in Libreville. The meeting closed with about ten resolutions, according to the Gabonese news site Gabonreview.

The ministers approved a draft regulation creating the Community Energy Information System, known by its French initials SIE-CEMAC. They also backed a roadmap to improve how energy data is produced, harmonised, secured and shared.

The regulation sets rules for collecting, processing, publishing and archiving the figures. National energy information units in each country are meant to form the foundation of the regional system.

Each government is to name focal points who produce, check, validate and publish the data. Statistics, collection methods and indicators are to be harmonised so the six countries can be compared directly.

Why the data is so weak

Experts from the six states met in Libreville from 21 to 23 September to prepare the ministerial session. Their diagnosis was blunt: national systems are poorly standardised and surveys are insufficient.

They found gaps on biomass such as firewood and charcoal, on energy efficiency, on prices and taxes, and on installed capacity. The national data units work with limited staff and money.

The experts asked every state to give its unit a permanent budget and qualified permanent staff. They also called for funding of each unit’s five-year action plan and a stronger legal footing.

Nicolas Beyeme Nguema, a CEMAC commissioner for economic and financial policy, said governance must rest on reliable, regular, accessible data. He warned the texts would achieve nothing without working national units.

A region short of power

Access to electricity varies widely across the bloc. World Bank data for 2024 shows 95% of Gabonese had power at home, against 72% in Cameroon and 65% in Equatorial Guinea.

The figure was 53% in the Republic of Congo, 18% in the Central African Republic and just 13% in Chad. Taken together, only about half of the region’s people have a household connection.

The last widely cited count of capacity shows how small the system is. A UNCTAD report, reported by Business in Cameroon in 2023, put the bloc’s installed power at about 3,700 MW.

UNCTAD is the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Cameroon alone had about as much capacity as Gabon, Congo and Equatorial Guinea combined.

Cameroon and Gabon lead

By that count, Cameroon held about 1,750 MW, or 48% of the regional total. Gabon followed with 780 MW, then the Republic of Congo with 640 MW and Equatorial Guinea with 350 MW.

Those totals predate the full start-up of Cameroon’s 420 MW Nachtigal hydropower dam. That alone shows how quickly such tables go out of date without a shared system to refresh them.

Gabon, the host, has its own reasons to care. Local media report frequent load-shedding in the country, meaning scheduled power cuts when supply cannot meet demand.

What the officials said

Philippe Tonangoye, Gabon’s minister for universal access to water and energy, chaired the talks. “We must have data that is reliable, regular, comparable and sufficiently disaggregated,” he said at the opening.

He added that there can be no lasting energy integration without integrating information systems. He called energy data “a shared strategic asset” that must be secured and serve regional development.

Baltasar Engonga Edjo’o, president of the CEMAC Commission, said the system must serve the bloc’s 2017 energy policy, which runs to 2035. That includes linking national grids and a planned regional electricity market.

The executive director of AFREC, the African Energy Commission of the African Union, also attended. The regional system is meant to feed an Africa-wide energy database run by that body.

Sovereignty and money

Ministers stressed that some water and energy data touches national security. Sharing between states is therefore to happen inside a secure framework with clearly defined levels of access.

Governments also admitted that too little money is the main risk to the project. They agreed to approach donors and development lenders together, around one consolidated list of needs for the region.

This fits a wider contest over African energy and minerals, explored in Africa: The New Scramble. Better CEMAC energy data would let governments negotiate dams and power lines from a stronger position.

What happens next

The resolutions now go to the Council of Ministers of the Economic Union of Central Africa, a CEMAC body, for formal adoption. Only after that can the system be put into practice.

“We must translate our commitments into actions, financing and results that can be measured,” Tonangoye said at the close. For foreign investors, the test is whether usable CEMAC energy data appears within a few years.

Until then, anyone planning a factory, mine or hotel in the region should expect inconsistent official figures. On-site back-up power remains a normal cost of doing business outside the best-supplied cities.

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