A crucial CEMAC Summit has been announced for this week in Congo Brazzaville.

Member countries of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community, CEMAC, are expected to meet in, Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo next week to iron out differences that have retarded the smooth functioning of events in the sub-region within the past years. Despite efforts at reforms within the CEMAC zone, several issues have remained unresolved over the years giving the picture of a divided house.
Ahead of the much awaited meeting of CEMAC Heads of State and government therefore, experts of the Economic and Monetary Community of CEMAC (UEAC) were in Brazzaville from July 11-18 for their 23rd ordinary session, while the Council of Ministers of the sub-region has been scheduled for July 22, according to a press release from the communication unit of the CEMAC Commission. The statement said the Council of Ministers meeting will be followed by the Summit of Heads of State and Government of CEMAC.
Officially, the focus of the CEMAC summit will be to examine the Regional Economic Programme (REP) which envisages a sub-region that should by 2025 be an integrated and economically emergent zone with security, solidarity and good governance evident at the service of humanity.
Yet, recent events have pointed to more divergence than unity within CEMAC member countries and personality conflicts have also been rife. Last year, the President of the CEMAC Commission, Antoine Ntsimi of Cameroon was virtually evicted out of the Headquarters of the institution in Bangui, Central African Republic. It took high-level diplomatic negotiations for him to go back to his office in Bangui.
Moreover, ideological differences have continued to undermine efforts to bring the six CEMAC countries closer to each other. The much-talked-of free movement of people and goods within the sub-region has remained on paper as far as some member-countries are concerned. Some CEMAC countries have not only been paranoid but egocentric.
A lofty project such as the CEMAC Airline which has shifted from the South African Airline to Air France partnership is yet to demonstrate any concrete take-off signs. Also, moves to bring the Douala Stock Exchange (DXS) closer to that of Libreville in Gabon have been unable to bear fruits in spite of the miniature nature of both stock markets. In fact, the economic strength of the entire sub-region is no match to that of neighbouring Nigeria alone and commonsense would have required that CEMAC States shrink their differences and form a common and competitive economic bloc. The obstacles to sub-regional integration within the CEMAC sub-region have been so glaring that Presidents Paul Biya and Idriss Deby Itno of Chad in their bilateral meeting in Yaounde last December 2011 wondered aloud why integration could be such a thorny question within CEMAC for so decades.
Although recent economic statistics have pointed to positive prospects for CEMAC, the experts meetings and Heads of State Summit of the zone will absolutely need to delve into questions of financial management given past records of misappropriation of fund within Bank of Central African States, BEAC.