[ACCI-CAVIE] In response to the financial suffocation of CEMAC, Dr. Guy Gweth, President of the African Center for Competitive Intelligence (ACCI-CAVIE), denounces a lack of political will rather than economic inevitability. Between the failure of the extractive model and the illicit retention of community taxes, the author of Puissance 237: For a Regional Power Strategy 2025-2050 vigorously calls on Yaoundé to finally embrace its numerical leadership.
The recent announcement by the Commission of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) regarding the suspension of part of its activities due to a lack of cash flow acted as an electric shock throughout the sub-region’s chancelleries. While some observers see this as the early signs of institutional death throes, this liquidity crisis actually reveals a much deeper pathology: the absence of an assumed “will to power” at the service of the collective. Although the CEMAC zone possesses immense geostrategic and natural assets, it remains a prisoner of a rent-seeking model and governance defined by budgetary restraint.
The question today is not so much the survival of the institution, but rather the capacity of member states to transform “survival integration” into “power integration.” This reflection centers on the diagnosis of the current budgetary impasse and the exhaustion of the extractive model, leading to the necessity of a driving regional leadership led by Cameroon.
The Mirage of Autonomous Financing and the Failure of Solidarity
One of CEMAC’s major paradoxes lies in the existence of financing mechanisms that are theoretically robust but deliberately neutralized by stakeholders. The Community Integration Tax (TCI), enshrined in 2000, was intended to guarantee the institution’s autonomy. However, as of December 31, 2025, collection arrears amounted to 263.4 billion FCFA. This situation is not the result of economic fate, but of a strategy of budgetary retention: indeed, several States collect the tax from users only to improperly incorporate it into their national budgets instead of remitting it to the Commission.
This erosion of community discipline strips integration of its political substance. In the first quarter of 2026, only Cameroon and Gabon are fulfilling their obligations with some regularity. This lack of institutional loyalty paralyzes structural projects and free movement, reducing the community to a formal shell disconnected from the realities of cross-border trade. Without an automatic and coercive recovery mechanism, CEMAC will remain under the constant threat of financial asphyxia.
The Exhaustion of the Extractive Model and the Urgency of Transformation
Beyond the treasury crisis, the region suffers from an anachronistic economic model inherited from the colonial period. Despite the riches of the subsoil (oil, minerals, timber, etc.), the six economies of the sub-region remain extremely vulnerable to external shocks. Dependence on the raw export of primary materials systematically exposes foreign assets to erosion and fuels recurring rumours of currency devaluation.
The Regional Economic Program aimed to break this trajectory. However, the absence of serious reforms in favor of industrialization and the promotion of “local content” keeps the zone in structural precariousness. Natural wealth can only constitute a lasting monetary shield if it undergoes a mutation toward a processing economy. More than ever, the economic sovereignty of Central African States is now played out on the field of structural transformation.
Toward Cameroonian Leadership for Shared Prosperity
The history of successful integration processes teaches us that no bloc progresses without a locomotive capable of assuming the costs and strategic direction. With 42.1% of the zone’s nominal GDP at the end of 2024, Cameroon holds a position of numerical leadership that it does not fully exercise on the political level. Unlike Côte d’Ivoire in WAEMU or Nigeria in ECOWAS, Yaoundé seems hesitant to endorse the role of regional architect.
This is the core message of the initiative “Puissance 237: For a Regional Power Strategy 2025-2050,” a work published in January 2025, through the lens of hard power, soft power, and smart power. Yaoundé must mobilize its economic hard power and diplomatic soft power to stabilize the zone. By becoming the engine of regional industrialization, the country does not just assert its own power; it pulls its neighbours toward common prosperity.
All things considered, the current CEMAC crisis must be perceived as an ultimate alarm signal. While the short term raises fears of the liquidity crisis extending to other organizations like ECCAS, the long term offers a prospect of recovery if, and only if, political will triumphs over national withdrawal. The transition from survival integration to power integration is the only way to guarantee Central Africa’s sovereignty in a world of global competition.
Dr. Guy Gweth