Gabon: the city of Bakoumba wants to be reborn, 30 years after the exploitation of manganese [1/3]
Audio 02:21
The old workers' cities of Bakoumba.
© RFI / Yves-Laurent Goma
By: Yves-Laurent Goma Follow
6 mins
In the 1960s, Bakoumba was one of Gabon's prosperous cities.
Unemployment was unknown there.
Water, electricity, school and health were free, even housing was free, all thanks to manganese.
But for 30 years, this beautiful era is over.
Manganese no longer passes through there.
The city is falling apart.
Comilog, which shipped manganese through Bakoumba for export via the port of Pointe-Noire in Congo, decided to revive this city.
Publicity
“
All you see there were Comilog cities.
Here, everyone was accommodated, no one lived in the neighborhood,
”says Arsène Painson, in his late fifties.
He was born in Bakoumba, to a French father who came to work in the manganese.
On board his luxurious 4X4, he shows us around his city, which he left for a job in Libreville.
“
Here it was the city for singles, here the city for workers who had wives.
You have the movie theater.
Here in 1970, we ate apples, sausage, ham.
Life was good.
There is also the foreman city and the executive city, there was an operating theater.
Myself, I was born in this block
.
"
"It was a little paradise"
Bakoumba is a city created in 1962 by the Ogooué mining company, Comilog. At the time, Gabon, which had no railroad, evacuated its manganese through the port of Pointe-Noire in the Congo. Bakoumba was the Technical Department for manganese, recalls Fabrice Wada, son of the terroir. “
It was a little paradise. We lacked almost nothing. People came from all over to work in Bankoumba
. "
The great adventure ended in 1991. Gabon, with its own railroad, stopped exporting its manganese via the port of Pointe-Noire in the Congo.
Everything collapsed in Bakoumba.
The exodus depopulated the city.
Those who remained are stricken by unemployment, according to these two residents of the city.
“
Unemployment really affects us a lot here.
There is no job, there is nothing,
”said one.
"
You would have to have a long arm to have a job here in Bakoumba
", adds the other.
Bakoumba, future “agricultural breeding ground”?
In the past, Comilog has already initiated some economic activities.
A few days ago, the company gathered the population to jointly draw up a list of projects to be carried out for the rebirth of Bakoumba.
André Massard, director of communications and public relations at Comilog.
“
In the post-manganese reconversion for Bakoumba, we plan to make Bakoumba an agricultural breeding ground, in order to allow this department to become the granary of the Haut-Ogooué province
.
"
The effects of this new policy should be felt in 3 years, according to the local development plan adopted by the two parties.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Gabon