“The Heads of State, all retired to their apartments by 12.30 am visibly relaxed and satisfied”. That is the laconic manner our special envoy to Brazzaville summed up the extraordinary summit of the economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, CEMAC which held in Brazzaville yesterday. The terse phrasing of the summit’s deliberations may not be sufficiently telling of all that happened in Brazzaville yesterday. But given the general environment of CEMAC, the is every reason to say that, for once, all the necessary attention is not only being given to the sub-regional body, but, even more important is the fact that some flesh is being given to CEMAC to improve its image of an institution that has functioned more on paper than delivering based on the real objective which is the economic and monetary integration of the six countries of Central African : Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

There are difficult obstacles to scale on the way of full integration least of which is not the individual nations chauvinistic posture manifested notably by feet-dragging in encouraging freedom of movement within the community realm as is the practice in some other regional communities such as ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States where, it is said, on the sheer presentation of a community passport or identity paper, a Nigerian can travel from Lagos to Cotonou, Lome, Accra, Abidjan, Monrovia, Freetown, Conakry, Banjul or Dakar undisturbed. That is effectively a community spirit which is hard to come by and which successive CEMAC summits have hardly introduced in a functional manner.

CEMAC is resolutely in new clothes. It seems to be gathering some needy clout which announces very happy days ahead. Proof of CEMAC’s new proactive posture can be seem from the sheer number of heavily-attended summits in the past six months. Since December 2009, no Head of State has missed a summit or a CEMAC-related event. First it was in Bangui in December 2009 where CEMAC’s problems came under a thorough diagnosis. Among the issues were the digital passport, the Air CEMAC project, the crisis rocking the Bank of Central African States and a revisit of the Fort Lamy consensus of 1973 by which certain positions within CEMAC and the Central Bank were attributed to certain countries. The problems of the Bank of Central African States and the Development Bank of Central African States were adequately addressed. The question of the reform of the Community’s institutions is in the process of finding a solution especially as some obnoxious aspects of the Fort Lamy consensus were rescinded with the most obvious outcome being the appointment of a non-Gabonese national to the position of Governor of BEAC.

The outcome of yesterday’s summit will obviously be let known in the days ahead. But the regularity of summits is already indicative of the proactive posture of Heads of State of the sub-region to address CEMAC’s issues. Just last April 15, 2010, all six Heads of State were in Malabo to inaugurate the Community parliament. Yesterday, all six were again present in Brazzaville to address the Community’s pressing questions. There is therefore, no doubt that CEMAC is gathering clout.

Even if results are not coming immediately, the regularity of concertations definitely spells a good augur for the sub-regional body.