COSUMAF, the Central African Financial Market Supervisory Commission

COSUMAF: definition and market regulator

The COSUMAF (Commission de surveillance du marché financier de l'Afrique centrale, the Central African Financial Market Supervisory Commission) is the regulator of the financial market of the six CEMAC states: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Chad. A community body created within UMAC, it oversees the non-bank financial products offered to the public and the entities that carry out these operations.

Missions of the COSUMAF

It protects savings invested in securities and other financial instruments, informs investors and ensures the proper functioning of the market. Its remit includes the Central African Securities Exchange, based in Douala, as well as brokerage firms and other intermediaries.

These intermediaries are essential for access to the listings of the regional exchange, where seven companies have been listed on the equity market since BGFI Holding Corporation arrived in May 2026. Brokerage firms operate in each of the six states.

The market is organised and supervised under a community regulation. The COSUMAF is separate from the Central African Banking Commission, which supervises banks, and from the BEAC, which conducts monetary policy.

Headquarters and presidency

The headquarters is in Libreville, Gabon. Housed in rented premises since 2005, the commission inaugurated on 30 March 2023 a headquarters that it owns, in the former building of the regional exchange, which was moved to Douala after the CEMAC decision to unify the financial markets of the sub-region. The inauguration took place in Libreville in the presence of the Gabonese minister of public works.

Nagoum Yamassoum, from Chad, chaired the institution from 2017. Jacqueline Nkembe-Adiaba, from Cameroon, succeeded him in June 2023 for a five-year term, after being designated by the CEMAC conference of heads of state held in Yaoundé on 16 March 2023.

Licences, sanctions and rules of the COSUMAF

The commission grants licences to brokerage firms and other market players, and granted in 2026 its first licence to a credit rating agency. It also licenses the managers of these market players.

It imposes sanctions: in a disciplinary session held in August 2026, it withdrew the licence of two intermediaries, a brokerage firm and a financial investment adviser, and ordered their liquidation. It also publishes rules that govern the activity of market intermediaries.

Cooperation with other regulators

In Libreville, the COSUMAF signed with the Inter-African Conference on Insurance Markets, the CIMA, and with the Financial Markets Authority of the West African Monetary Union an agreement intended to bring their financial regulations closer together.

This cooperation concerns players who operate from one monetary zone to the other, the UMAC zone and the WAMU zone being governed by two separate treaties.