Financial Services

The country is home to the Stock Exchange of Central Africa (Bourse des Valeurs Mobilières d’Afrique Centrale, BVMAC), which has been operational since 2008 and is the regional exchange for the CEMAC economic bloc. The market has seen only light activity, in particular as regards equity listings. In its 2014 Article IV Consultation for Gabon...

Mobile money has been a hot topic since Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom launched its M-PESA money transfer system in 2007. The initiative subsequently saw astonishing success, and now by some accounts is responsible for cash transfers equivalent in volume to roughly one-third of Kenya’s GDP. However, replicating that immediate success elsewhere...

Although penetration of insurance services has typically been higher in Gabon than most surrounding markets, the country has shown that room for growth remains. Securing new insurance customers has sometimes been challenging for providers, due to low market awareness, particularly among low-income earners, and insufficiently developed...

Driven by increasing corporate activity on the back of steady headline growth, Gabon has developed a comparatively large insurance sector, despite the country’s small population. Much of the sector’s growth has been linked to industrial development and expansion of infrastructure in recent years, mostly encouraged by the government’s Emerging...