Economic Community of Central African States

Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda and São Tomé and Príncipe. That is the list published by the ECCAS Commission and read for this catalogue on 2 September 2026. Rwanda recorded its withdrawal on 7 June 2025 and is still named on that list.

The constitutive treaty was signed at Libreville on 18 October 1983, following a decision in principle taken at a summit of the Customs and Economic Union of Central African States in December 1981. The signatories were that union's members, the members of the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Angola remained an observer until it took full membership in 1999.

No. Six of its members belong to the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa and share the Central African CFA franc; their records date that membership from 25 June 1999. The others issue their own money: the kwanza, the Burundian franc, the Congolese franc, the Rwandan franc and the dobra. A free trade area has run since 2004, and the customs union with a common external tariff that it was meant to lead to has not been reached.

Rwanda's cabinet statement of 9 June 2025 records a withdrawal decided on 7 June 2025 and gives its reasons: that the chairmanship held by the Democratic Republic of the Congo from February 2023 to February 2024 was used against a fellow member, and that Article 3 of the treaty on good neighbourliness was violated. The foreign ministry's statement adds that Rwanda's turn at the rotating chairmanship under Article 6 was set aside at the 26th Ordinary Summit in Malabo. Those are Rwanda's own reasons, and the catalogue records the dispute without settling it.

The Council for Peace and Security in Central Africa, the community's peace and security body, under which sit the Multinational Force of Central Africa and the Early Warning Mechanism for Central Africa. A statement to the United Nations Security Council on 13 June 2018 dates its creation to February 1999, taken with United Nations support through the Standing Advisory Committee on Security Questions in Central Africa; the Commission's own summary dates it to February 2000.

No. CEMAC, the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, is the monetary union that grew out of the customs union whose leaders called for a wider community in December 1981. It has six members, all of whom are also in ECCAS, and it is the body behind the Central African CFA franc. ECCAS is the wider community and is one of the eight regional economic communities recognised as pillars of the African Economic Community.