Gabon gets taste for local beef

THE rib eye steak that Matthieu Msellati was tucking into at a restaurant in Tchibanga in southwestern Gabon unusually came from a cattle ranch less than 50km away.

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Eating locally sourced food is still a rarity in the oil-rich central African country, which imports almost everything it eats but has a growing appetite for that to change.

“We know where it comes from and that’s reassuring,” the 48-year-old manager of a tourist attraction enthused, between mouthfuls.

On social media, use of the “consogab” hashtag showing support for eating and promoting Gabonese products has grown in recent months.

President Brice Oligui Nguema, who took power in a military coup in 2023 and was elected president last April, has offered small agricultural businesses low-interest loans to help them boost the country’s food self-sufficiency and offered low-interest loans to small farming enterprises.

A Gabonese eats just under 41kg of meat a year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization — but less than 10% is produced in the country.

The only large-scale cattle farming business in Gabon is the Grande Mayumba Development Company, which owns the Nyanga ranch, where Msellati’s steak came from.

“We're a forest people. Our ancestors lived by hunting and gathering, not from livestock,’ Morgan Bignoumba, deputy director of livestock at the agriculture ministry, said.