Gabon’s gambling monopoly still has no published list of approved online betting operators, or fees

More than six months after existing permissions expired, Gabon’s state-owned La Gabonaise des Jeux (GDJ) has not publicly said whether it has finished selecting private online-betting operators. For PSPs and acquirers, the bigger issue is simpler: there is still no public list of approved operators, no published fee schedule, and no visible revenue-sharing framework.

1. Previous authorisations, licences and declarations became invalid on 7 April 2026. The deadline appeared in a GDJ notice signed by director general Roméo Nguema Ondo, which invited private operators to apply for licences under the company’s supervision.
2. In February, GDJ called for expressions of interest with a 2 March deadline and promised a “transparent, fair and rigorous selection process” for operators with proven technical, financial and organisational capacity. Applicants also had to comply with rules on excessive gambling, access by minors, money laundering and operational security.
3. More than seven months after applications closed, GDJ has not published the outcome. It has not named any approved operators or set out the fees, operating requirements or any revenue-sharing arrangements that would govern private participation under the new state-controlled system.
4. Gabon brought online betting into its gambling framework through Ordinance 0012/PR/2020, ratified with amendments in February 2021. That law classed online betting businesses as third-category operators holding renewable five-year declarations, while a decree in May 2022 set a nationwide quota of five online operators for three years.
5. The new framework was approved by the Council of Ministers on 29 December 2025. Ordinances 0010/PR/2025 and 0011/PR/2025 are dated 30 December. The reform abolished the previous gaming commission and its technical secretariat and created GDJ as a state-owned company to organise, operate and control gambling while supervising private operators.

Gabon is a Central African country of about 2.65 million people on the Atlantic coast. During parliamentary scrutiny in 2026, lawmakers questioned the conflict created by putting commercial and supervisory roles in the same state company; then-interior minister Adrien Nguema Mba said control systems would separate oversight from GDJ’s operations. Before a Senate committee in June, he also described the reform as a “sovereign choice” and said GDJ would help provide “the complete traceability of financial flows.”