Gabon’s gambling monopoly faces questions over fees, transparency and control
The state-owned gaming company has also not identified any businesses approved to operate under the new state-controlled system in Gabon, a Central African country of about 2.65 million people on the Atlantic coast.
Previous authorisations, licences and declarations became invalid on 7 April 2026. The deadline appeared in a GDJ notice signed by director general Roméo Nguema Ondo, which invited private operators to apply for licences under the company’s supervision.
The absence of a published outcome does not establish whether individual businesses have received approval privately or are operating under transitional arrangements. But it leaves no clear public account of which operators may participate or on what terms.
A promise of transparency
In February, the GDJ called for expressions of interest, with a 2 March deadline. It promised a “transparent, fair and rigorous selection process” to identify operators with proven technical, financial and organisational capacity.
Applicants also had to comply with rules on excessive gambling, access by minors, money laundering and operational security.
More than seven months after applications closed, the GDJ has not published the result. It has not named any approved operators or set out the fees, operating requirements and any revenue-sharing arrangements governing private participation.
From permissions to monopoly
Gabon brought online betting explicitly into its gambling framework through Ordinance 0012/PR/2020, ratified with amendments in February 2021. That law classed online betting businesses as third-category operators holding renewable five-year declarations. A decree in May 2022 set a nationwide quota of five online operators for three years.
The Council of Ministers approved the new framework on 29 December 2025. Ordinances 0010/PR/2025 and 0011/PR/2025 are dated 30 December.
The reform abolished the previous gaming commission and its technical secretariat and created the GDJ as a state-owned company to organise, operate and control gambling while supervising private operators.
Questions over oversight
During parliamentary scrutiny in 2026, lawmakers questioned the conflict that could arise from placing commercial and supervisory roles in the same state company. Then-interior minister Adrien Nguema Mba said control systems would separate oversight from the GDJ’s operations.
Before a Senate committee in June, he described the reform as a “sovereign choice, guided by the urgency of a total reappropriation of this sector“.
He also pointed to plans for 2,000 points of sale across Gabon’s nine provinces. He said the GDJ would guarantee “what until now escaped the state: the complete traceability of financial flows“.
The GDJ’s board met for the first time on 7 August and approved its strategic plan, budgets and internal rules. However, public information does not yet explain in detail how its commercial interests will be kept separate from its supervisory duties.
Who controls payment flows?
In May 2025, Gabon Media Time reported that the mandate to centralise gambling-related financial flows had gone to eTech SAS without a competitive tender. It also relayed criticism from local technology companies that said they had been excluded.
Then interior minister Hermann Immongault defended the choice. “I will not enter into polemics. The state is sovereign. The state has decided to have this operator,” he told l’Union. He called the process legal and transparent, part of a public-private partnership, and said eTech would eventually become wholly state-owned.
At the time, Immongault also explained why the state wanted control of payments. “We operate on a purely declarative basis. An operator declares what it wants and pays 8% in tax. This model is obsolete,” he said.
In June 2026, Gabon Media Time reported that Paymetrust had signed an agreement with the GDJ to centralise and supervise online betting payments through a platform linked to mobile-money and banking networks.
The GDJ has not publicly explained how Paymetrust’s reported role relates to eTech’s existing mandate.
Fees remain unresolved
In June, l’Union reported that operators were still awaiting definitive licences, operating agreements and specifications. It also relayed industry concerns about licences being required for each activity and site, higher cash-in and cash-out costs, delayed payment of winnings and difficulties reconciling accounts. The report cited an estimated monthly deduction equivalent to 30% of turnover.
The initial 2026 Finance Law separately projected CFA1.24 billion ($2.1 million) in revenue from the tax on games of chance. That forecast does not reveal the fees or other commercial terms imposed on individual operators.
The reform promises greater state control, financial traceability and higher public revenue. Its effectiveness will remain difficult to judge, however, until the GDJ publishes the outcome of the selection process, identifies any approved operators and sets out the financial terms governing their participation.