Data-center law in Gabon

National jurisdiction · as of 2026-09-04

Drafted with AI

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page. How this site is made

Gabon has no data-center-specific siting, permitting, or utility statute; a data-center project sites through the general privileged-economic-zone framework of loi n°010/2011 du 18 juillet 2011 portant réglementation des zones économiques à régime privilégié, implemented for the Nkok zone by décret n°0461/PR/MPITPTHTAT du 10 octobre 2012.

An enterprise admitted to a zone is exempt from customs duties and indirect taxes on its imports of equipment, materials and supplies for 25 years and from the tax on industrial and commercial profits for ten years from its first sale, while its exports out of the national customs territory bear a tax of at most 10% of their free-on-board value.

No provision addresses electricity grid interconnection, water use, or air emissions specifically; the law requires the zone's administrative authority to work to connect the zone to the public infrastructure and services it needs, and the implementing decree names the water and electricity distribution networks and information-and-communications-technology infrastructure among them for the Nkok zone.

01

Instruments on record

1 instrument on record, grouped by the family of approval each one governs.

Public agreements

What fiscal agreements attach a data center to its host jurisdiction?

Loi n°010/2011 portant réglementation des zones économiques à régime privilégié

In force

Loi n°010/2011 du 18 juillet 2011 portant réglementation des zones économiques à régime privilégié mise en œuvre par le décret n°0461/PR/MPITPTHTAT du 10 octobre 2012 portant création de la Zone Économique à Régime Privilégié de Nkok

Applies to both

Loi n°010/2011 sets Gabon's general framework for a zone économique à régime privilégié (ZERP), a defined part of the national customs territory in which at least three quarters of the industrial, commercial and service activities located there are destined for export. A decree creates and delimits each zone and fixes the kinds of enterprise and activity that may settle in it.

Admission to the zone is open to any person, Gabonese or foreign, who creates an enterprise there and is to export at least 75% of its production outside Gabon. The zone's Organe d'Aménagement et de Gestion is in charge of developing, organizing, promoting, managing and maintaining the zone's common infrastructure and equipment.

The zone's Autorité Administrative must do everything to connect the zone to the public infrastructure and services it needs to carry out its development programme and operate properly. An admitted investor is exempt from the tax on industrial and commercial profits for the first ten years from the enterprise's first sale, and pays that tax at 10% for the five years after.

Imports by admitted enterprises of equipment, materials, raw materials, tools, office supplies, consumer goods and spare parts from outside the national customs territory are exempt for 25 years from their registration in the commercial register from all customs duties, taxes and fees, including the value-added tax that customs collects. Exports of goods made in the zone out of the national customs territory bear a tax of at most 10% of their free-on-board value.

A sale from the zone into the national customs territory counts as an import and pays the ordinary customs duties and value-added tax. An investor may sell up to 25% of its production into the national customs territory without losing the law's exemptions and advantages. Loi n°010/2011 is dated Libreville, 18 July 2011. Décret n°0931/PR of 17 July 2011 promulgates the law. The law was published in Journal Officiel n°67 of 16 September 2011.

Article 55 provides that the law is to be registered, published under the emergency procedure and executed as a law of the State, and no article of the law fixes a separate day of entry into force. Ordonnance n°017/PR/2013 of 21 February 2013 modifies certain provisions of the law. Ordonnance n°017/PR/2013 rewrites Articles 5 and 9 of the law.

As rewritten, Article 5 has the State sell or concede the zone's development, organization, promotion and management to the Organe d'Aménagement et de Gestion. As rewritten, Article 9 has the Organe d'Aménagement et de Gestion offer buildings, hangars and terre-pleins to users and investors for sale as well as for rent. Loi n°036/2018, dated 8 February 2019, was published in Journal Officiel n°10 bis of 14 March 2019.

Loi n°036/2018 regulates the Zones d'Investissement Spéciales (special investment zones) and modifies and completes certain provisions of Loi n°010/2011. A special investment zone may consist of one or more categories of zone, among them a Zone Economique à Régime Privilégié. Article 87 of Loi n°036/2018 repeals earlier provisions contrary to it, notably those of Loi n°010/2011.

Décret n°0461/PR/MPITPTHTAT of 10 October 2012, made under the law, creates and organizes the Nkok zone in the department of Komo-Mondah. It assigns the zone's development and management to a company of Gabonese law, GABON SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE SA (GSEZ SA).

It requires the Autorité Administrative to do everything to connect the Nkok zone to the public infrastructure and services it needs, notably the water and electricity distribution networks and the infrastructure giving access to information and communication technologies.

Under the décret, sales of goods and services to the zone's investors, its Organe d'Aménagement et de Gestion, their affiliated companies and their subcontractors are exempt from export duties, customs duties and other taxes collected on export from the national customs territory or import into the Nkok zone. Each investor, affiliated company and subcontractor in the zone remains subject to the Code Général des Impôts' general declarative obligations.

Source: Full text of law

Every entry cites the instrument it describes. None of it is legal advice: verify a citation before relying on it. Full sourcing: read the methodology. The rest of the record: all jurisdictions.