Touadéra's Regime Jails Its Critics While Bangui Grows Poorer

Under driving rain, hundreds of Central Africans marched down the Avenue des Martyrs in Bangui on 13 November 2026. They were not asking for a throne or a territory. They were asking for bread, for fuel at a decent price, and for the freedom of their fellow citizens. Men and women who can no longer afford to fill up their motorbike taxis walked forward singing the national anthem, because it is the only space they have left.

One question must be asked without hesitation. What kind of state imprisons young people for calling a "ville morte," a day of civic shutdown? The answer is simple, and it is damning: it is a state that is afraid of its own people.

The facts are stubborn. The Republican Bloc for the Defence of the Constitution, the BRDC, organised this peaceful march to denounce the high cost of living and the recent rise in fuel prices. It demands the release of five activists arrested on 15 October 2026, three days after they called for a day of civic shutdown on 12 October. Among the detainees named are Élysée Nguémalé and Quentin Ngouando. They are being held at the Camp de Roux, a military site in Bangui. Civilian activists, prosecuted for calling a civic strike, are locked inside a barracks. This is not an administrative detail. It is a message sent to an entire population.

Look at the irony with the eyes of reason. The BRDC defends a Constitution. Yet the Central African Constitution of 2016 limited presidential terms to two. In 2023, a referendum erased that limit, and the regime in power presented this retreat as a victory for the people. When an organisation that defends the fundamental text takes to the streets, it is only demanding what the law still guarantees on paper: the right to demonstrate, the right to criticise, the right not to be arrested for speaking. A state that respects its Constitution does not send activists to the Camp de Roux.

We must also look at what this population endures every day. The Central African Republic ranks among the poorest countries on the planet, despite soils and subsoils of extraordinary wealth: gold, diamonds, timber, potential uranium, arable land. These resources exist. Prosperity never comes. Every rise in the price of fuel means more expensive transport, more expensive food at the market, a rarer meal. A mother in Bangui does not read macroeconomic reports. She counts coins, and she knows her child will go to school tomorrow with an empty stomach.

And what does power do in the face of this anger? It deploys soldiers and fills the cells. MINUSCA, the United Nations Mission, supervised the march with its blue helmets and Central African security forces. No major disorder was reported. That is good. But the presence of the UN in the streets must not make us forget who is holding the activists, and why. Protecting a demonstration is one thing. Securing the release of prisoners of conscience is another, and this is where the international community must stop settling for polite observations.

Because the Central African Republic is not governed from Bangui alone. It is also contested from Moscow, from Kigali, and from elsewhere. Russian mercenaries, initially drawn from the Wagner Group, were deployed to protect the regime in power, in exchange for access to mines and concessions. Rwandan contingents also operate on Central African territory. Each of these actors promises security and stability. Each one, above all, installs its own influence, its own access to resources, its own impunity. This is not a new scramble for Africa unfolding here. It is the same scramble, with different uniforms and different contracts. When a regime needs foreign mercenaries to protect itself from its own citizens, it has already lost the social contract that legitimises it.

We must say it plainly: the principal responsibility for this situation still lies with the Central African government. Foreign powers profit from a democratic vacuum that they did not create. A contested election, a tailor-made referendum, opponents thrown into detention, a muzzled press: these are the breeding ground. No foreign force can make trust grow where institutions have been emptied of their substance.

So what is to be done? The answer is neither anarchy nor nostalgia for force. It lies in solid institutions and simple rules. Botswana built its prosperity on transparent management of its mineral resources and on respected political alternation. Mauritius showed that a small state without major natural wealth can become a stable economy through the rule of law, economic freedom and independent justice. Senegal, in 2024, proved that peaceful alternation is possible when the people vote and the institutions hold. These examples are not miracles. They are choices.

For Bangui, the priorities are clear. Élysée Nguémalé, Quentin Ngouando and all prisoners of conscience must be released immediately, and any civilian case must be transferred to civilian judges, never to a barracks. The government must publish the price structures for hydrocarbons and explain every increase, because transparency is the first antidote to anger. The National Assembly must guarantee the independence of the judiciary and of the High Authority for Communication. Civil society, trade unions, chambers of commerce and the media must work together to demand accountability, without violence and without complacency.

As for the international community, it must stop confusing stability with silence. The African Union and ECCAS have a duty to remind Bangui that peace without freedom is merely a pause before the next explosion. The United Nations must make the protection of civic freedoms a concrete priority of the MINUSCA mandate, not a line in a press release. And the partners who buy Central African timber, gold and diamonds must demand, at the very least, that these revenues fund neither repression nor arbitrary detention.

We Africans must no longer accept being told that democracy is a luxury for rich countries. The Central Africans who marched in the rain on 13 November showed that courage has no economic border. In Bangui, as in Dakar, Nairobi or Accra, the question is the same: who governs, and for whom? If you are Central African, demand the releases, demand price transparency, demand judges who do not take orders from the barracks. If you are elsewhere on this continent, amplify these names, Élysée Nguémalé and Quentin Ngouando, until they walk out of the Camp de Roux. Silence has always been the best ally of those who lock people up. Let us break it.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL