Nana-Mambere

Nana-Mambéré prefecture occupies CAR's western frontier with Cameroon, centered on Bouar—a market town 437 km from Bangui at nearly 1,000m elevation, historically site of Camp Leclerc (French military base). The prefecture's 371,863 inhabitants (2024 estimate) live in diamond and gold territory where artisanal mining persists despite, and sometimes because of, state weakness. The November 2024 lifting of the Kimberley Process embargo on CAR diamonds theoretically allows legal exports from all regions, potentially unlocking formal revenue streams from Nana-Mambéré's artisanal production. Yet the same insecurity that suppressed official mining—armed militias, Wagner activity, weak governance—continues to channel extraction through informal networks. The road to Cameroon (210 km to the frontier) represents the prefecture's economic lifeline: trade routes that function regardless of Bangui's control. Agriculture dominates livelihoods as across CAR (52% of GDP nationally), with subsistence farming of cassava, sorghum, and millet. The IMF projects CAR's GDP at just $2.82 billion in 2024 with $529 per capita income—conditions where prefectures like Nana-Mambéré operate more as frontier extraction zones than integrated economic territories. Distance from capital, proximity to international border, and mineral endowment create the conditions for parallel economies operating beyond formal state reach.