The Grande Mayumba Development Company has reached an important step today following the signing of port concession agreement of great Mayumba with OPRAG (Office of Ports and Harbors of Gabon), port authority.
Grande Mayumba Development Company (GMCD) is a public-private partnership formed between the Gabonese Republic and SFM Africa limited (SFM Africa) to consolidate and develop a forest and rural area of 631 000 ha and a marine area of 260 900 ha in nyanga province at the south part of Gabon. The spaces will be developed on the basis of an integrated long-term lands management plan on an optimal and sustainable ecological and economic basis, Grande Mayumba sustainable development plan, which provides for the creation of new businesses in Mayumba region and important spaces explicitly reserved for community conservation and forestry.
These companies will implement integrated, inclusive and verifiable strategies to achieve social, environmental and economic sustainability in the project area by securing environmental rights and natural resource values attributable to various rural areas. The project has six main components: forest exploitation, wood transformation, agribusiness, and fishings, ecotourism, and infrastructures developments.
Fund Deposit and Consignment of Gabon (FDC Gabon) is a strategic partner of Grande Mayumba Development Company because the long-term objectives development and the sustainability of the project reflects the mandate of FDC Gabon to finance the development of quality commercial projects and promote inclusive economic growth and accelerate diversification.
Grand Mayumba will play an important role in supporting Gabon’s vision of being leader in sustainable development in the Congo basin’s, and in Africa, and serves as a model for green growth base on these principles. By mapping forest cover, assessing Carbone storage capacity, inventorying biodiversity and taking holistic approach to community and environmental rights and conservation…. The Grande Mayumba Development Company will be an important project of global reach in terms of innovation for sustainable and respectful development, especially in the context of the fight against climates changes.
Speaking, at the signing ceremony, Alain BERNSTEIN, President of SFM Africa, said: Gabon’s «natural resources are world class and la Grande Mayumba will put man and nature at the heart of Development. Land, permits and regulatory licenses in place and a strong partnership with Gabonese republic, we now have a solid foundation and a clear roadmap to develop the project. In the past, we have carried out rigorous research and development work that that has allowed us to acquire local essential knowledge to complete our advanced expertise in terms of sustainable investment and development and land use planning. The project was carefully designed through an extensive consultation process for a numbers of years to ensure that it meets the needs of all stakeholders, which means that we are now well positioned to execute it at the place expected ».
The Chief executive Director of OPRAG, Mister Landry Regis LACCRUCHE LELABOU, said that the development of the wharf Mangali lagoon will allow southern part of Gabon to benefit from accelerated economic development by providing logistic solution and better quality access, more economical and more reliable.
The public service port agreement signed today with OPRAG concerns a lagoon port facility near Mayumba, which is necessary for the deployment of GMDC projects. The port infrastructure will developed in several phases in collaboration with OPRAG. The investments will start immediately to open a sea gate to and from Mayumba, which will be made available to any stakeholder wishing to use the infrastructure for the development of southern part of Gabon.