China to help oil-dependent Gabon shift economic gears to greener industry
- President Xi Jinping hails comprehensive strategic cooperation partnership, Beijing’s highest level of bilateral relations
- Agreements include investment for economic diversification, climate change
Under the agreement, China will help build key infrastructure and encourage Chinese investment in Gabon’s forestry, fishery, digital economy and industrial estates.
“China is willing to work with Gabon to promote the steady and long-term development of the China-Gabon comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership,” Xi added.
A joint statement released after the meeting said China and Gabon agreed to increase the level of bilateral trade.
“China will actively study the possibility of more Gabonese products entering the Chinese market,” the joint statement said.
China is Gabon’s largest trading partner with two-way trade reaching US$4.55 billion in 2022 – up by more than half year on year, according to Chinese customs data. Gabon is heavily dependent on its oil and minerals, with crude petroleum and manganese ore contributing 83 per cent of the country’s revenues.
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Gabon, a tiny country on the Central African west coast with a population of just over 2 million people, also exports various wood products, but the government wants to diversify its economy by attracting more investment into its forestry and tourism industries. Gabon’s mature oilfields have seen a steady production decline – from a peak of 370,000 barrels per day in 1997 to about 190,000 barrels per day now.
Gabon belongs to a small league of countries that absorb more carbon dioxide than they emit, making them “carbon sinks”.
Gabon’s government says high carbon emitters such as the United States, China and many European countries should offset their carbon emissions by paying it to keep its forests intact.
Gabon’s former president, Omar Bongo Ondimba, predicted a future without oil and implemented drastic measures to strike “a balance between conservation and exploitation of timber”.
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The measures included the creation of 13 national parks and the cancellation of many forest concessions.
When Ondimba, the country’s second president, died in 2009, his son Ali Bongo was elected. His first act was to ban the export of timber logs, restricting exports to only processed wood.
Meanwhile, Gabon has started attracting tourists to its national parks with eco-tourism villages while offering visitors the chance to see exotic wildlife in its natural habitat.
Central to Gabon’s forest economy are a dozen Chinese companies that own forest concessions and more than 30 others that process the wood. The companies tend to control the entire supply chain – from felling trees to transforming them into timber products.
The companies, which operate across more than 6 million hectares (15 million acres), account for more than half of Gabon’s total commercial logging area, controlling about 40 per cent of concessions.
Xi said China appreciated Gabon’s role in coordinating Africa’s response to global climate change by leading environmental protection in Africa, and as the head of the African team of the United Nations climate change negotiations.
President Bongo, who arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a four-day visit, thanked China for providing assistance to Gabon, which he said played an important role in the country’s economic diversification and industrialisation.
“Chinese enterprises are welcome to participate in the construction of industrial estates in Gabon,” Bongo said, adding that his country would provide a good environment for Chinese enterprises.
The two leaders oversaw the signing of bilateral cooperation agreements on investment, agriculture, housing and urban construction and climate change.
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She said that as China sought to expand its presence in francophone Africa beyond its strong ties with the “big ones” like Ivory Coast and Senegal, Gabon remained an important partner.
“Gabon is positioning itself at the forefront of the climate and energy transition in Africa,” Tremann said, adding that it sought to transition from a carbon-based economy to a green economy by leveraging vast natural resources for carbon trading and conservation efforts.
She said that since China was also seeking to position itself as a leader in climate change technology and investment, the two nations were matched well.
“China has been making a concerted effort to engage smaller African countries as well as the more politically and economically powerful ones, so Gabon makes sense here too,” Tremann said.
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David Shinn, a specialist in China-Africa relations at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, said Gabon was moderately important to China.
“It is a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in 2023 and tends to vote with China on controversial issues before the United Nations,” Shinn said.
China was arguably more important for Gabon, which exported more than US$1 billion worth of oil to China annually, he said.
“Gabon is one of the relatively few African countries that has a significant trade surplus with China,” Shinn said.
