Le 4 mai 2025, deux ministres gabonais ont signé cinq contrats pour 775 milliards de FCFA avec des partenaires étrangers afin de produire localement 130 000 tonnes de poulets de chair par an d’ici 2027. Le plan vise près de 100 000 emplois, s’accompagne d’exon
By the time the ink dried on 4 May 2025, Gabon had already chosen the direction. Not an abrupt stop to imports overnight, not a single dramatic rupture. The line was drawn anyway: the country would build its own poultry production, then scale outward.
On that day. two Gabonese ministers signed five “strategic contracts” with foreign groups for a total of 775 billion FCFA. just under 1.2 billion euros. The objective set in the documents is concrete and fast: produce locally 130. 000 tonnes of broiler meat each year and create roughly 100. 000 jobs—before 2027.
The arrangements are structured around integrated poultry farms, with each partner covering the chain from hatchery to breeding, feed production, slaughter, and logistics. The list of signatories spans multiple countries and one clear theme: bringing the full system under national control.
A Cameroonian firm, AVI Group, is among the investors. It plans to put 10.8 billion FCFA into a poultry farm in Oyem, in the Woleu-Ntem province, with an annual capacity of 10,000 tonnes. Hakan Kiran, a Turkish holding company, is slated to invest 15 billion FCFA at Ntoum for 60,000 tonnes.
The largest envelope of the five contracts comes from the Chinese partner. It commits 155 billion FCFA to agro-industrial infrastructure across Libreville and Port-Gentil.
The partners are not only taking on production targets. They are also receiving specific fiscal advantages. The contracts include a corporate income tax exemption for five years, along with tax benefits for equipment and inputs.
Alongside the big plants, the plan also names smaller players. “150 small producers” are set to be supported technically. Among them. fifteen producers already have access to reduced-interest loans at 4%. through a 6.8 billion FCFA fund managed by the Banque pour le commerce et l’entrepreneuriat du Gabon.
The scale of the ambition becomes harder to ignore when the ministers cite what Gabon is trying to replace. Pacôme Kossy points to an import reality that reshapes the political urgency of the poultry contracts: 70% of food products are imported. for roughly 1 billion dollars. Chicken imports alone represent 75% of national consumption. In that context. a local production target of 130. 000 tonnes by 2027 is less a development project than a direct attempt to rebalance daily shopping baskets.
But poultry is described as the most visible front in a wider plan for food sovereignty. The project also covers cassava, banana, onion, tomato, pork, and beef. In 2024, those food items accounted for about 20% of Gabon’s total imports, according to the World Bank.
The poultry contracts land inside a broader industrial logic Libreville has been pursuing. The Belinga mining project—estimated at 10 billion dollars—follows the same idea of processing on site and refusing raw extraction. An export ban on untransformed manganese is planned starting in 2029. Yet the financial backdrop is tight: Gabon’s debt is expected to reach 86% of GDP this year. well above the regional benchmark. Even so, Libreville appears determined to move forward “with or without the IMF.”.
Whether the new poultry commitments will hold the calendar is still an open question. Major projects in Central Africa often slip behind schedule. No one can say yet if the five contracts signed on 4 May 2025 will translate into the 2027 production targets promised on paper.
Still, the method—foreign investors paired with private local champions—reads like a model that other countries in the region are watching closely as they weigh their own paths toward food independence.
Gabon autosuffisance avicole 775 milliards FCFA poulets de chair AVI Group Hakan Kiran Port-Gentil Libreville Pacôme Kossy Banque pour le commerce et l’entrepreneuriat du Gabon souveraineté alimentaire