Gabon

Gabon is a small, resource-rich Central African economy at an inflection point: an oil producer past its peak, deliberately pivoting toward minerals, wood-processing and a monetisable green endowment. Crude still anchors the economy — over 80% of merchandise exports and about a quarter of GDP — but the World Bank projects three consecutive years of declining oil output as mature fields deplete, with growth forecast to average just 2.4% over 2025–27.

The diversification story is real and increasingly state-directed: Gabon is the world's #2 manganese producer and hosts the Nkok Special Economic Zone, which built a domestic wood-processing industry on the back of a 2010 raw-log export ban — a 'ban-and-beneficiate' template now being extended to manganese (a raw-ore export ban from 2029). An ~88% forest cover gives it a differentiated carbon asset few peers can match.

The political backdrop is a transition that has followed its promised arc: the August 2023 coup ended 56 years of Bongo rule, and General Oligui Nguema won an April 2025 election and was inaugurated — reducing near-term uncertainty but signalling a more interventionist, sovereignty-minded state (exemplified by the national oil company's $1.3bn pre-emptive takeover of Assala Energy). The core risks are structural oil decline, a high debt load, and a small ~2.5m-person market.