Cameroon Décret n° 2024/05251/PM — modalités de détention, commercialisation, exportation, importation et transit des substances minérales

Mechanism

Décret 2024/05251/PM is the trade-flow control pillar of Cameroon's post-2023 mining regulatory overhaul. Where sister decree 2024/05061/PM governs the issuance, transfer, renewal, and withdrawal of mining titles (the administrative access-rights process), this decree governs the downstream commercial disposition of mineral substances once extracted — who may hold, sell, move across borders, or transit mineral substances, under what conditions, and subject to what authorisations.

Key operational provisions (as framed by the PM Office):

• Possession: Holders of mineral substances must satisfy licensing and documentation

requirements; unlicensed holding of significant quantities of classified minerals is an administrative and criminal offence.

• Commercialisation: The 2023 Code Minier vested SONAMINES with monopoly purchase

rights over gold and diamonds and preferential-purchase rights over other "strategic mineral substances." This decree operationalises those rights, establishing the administrative pathway through which mine operators sell regulated minerals — either directly to SONAMINES or to licensed third parties where SONAMINES waives its priority.

• Export: Exporters of mineral substances require prior authorisation from MINMIDT

(Ministère des Mines, de l'Industrie et du Développement Technologique). Export of unprocessed or partially processed minerals may be subject to additional conditions aligned with Cameroon's broader beneficiation policy.

• Import and transit: Parallel authorisation requirements apply to mineral imports

and transit shipments, relevant for Cameroon's role as a logistics corridor for landlocked Central African neighbours.

Relationship to the 18–19 November 2024 implementing-decree package

The decree is part of a co-signed 8-decree package. Known members of the package relevant to trade and investment:

Strategic implications

SONAMINES monopoly operationalisation. The 2023 Code Minier's SONAMINES commercialisation monopoly was a headline provision but inoperative without implementing rules defining the purchase pathway. This decree supplies that infrastructure, making the monopoly enforceable in practice.

Mbalam-Nabeba iron-ore corridor. The decree establishes the export-authorisation framework that will govern any eventual iron-ore export from the Mbalam-Nabeba project (Cameroon-Congo cross-border corridor). Sundance Resources / Bestway / AustSino have all been in permit limbo; the regulatory clarity provided by this framework is a prerequisite for credible project restart.

Nkamouna-Lomié battery-metals. The marketing and export modalities under this decree will directly determine how a future SONAMINES-led downstream partner can monetise cobalt, nickel, and manganese output from Nkamouna-Lomié — materially affecting investor economics in the SONAMINES international tender launched January 2026.

Sub-Saharan resource-nationalism arc. This decree sits within a broader 2024–25 wave of implementing-decree operationalisation across Sahel and West/Central African mining-code reforms: BF Décret 2025-0598 (SOPAMIB), MG Décret 2024-056 (mining permits), ML Décret 2024-0396 (CSSM strategic minerals). Cameroon's package is the most comprehensive in terms of downstream-transaction scope.

Downstream implications

• Any export of cobalt, nickel, manganese, iron ore, gold, or diamonds from Cameroon

now requires MINMIDT export authorisation under this framework.

• SONAMINES's priority-purchase path is operationalised — mine operators selling to

third parties must demonstrate SONAMINES waiver.

• Foreign investors in battery-metals and iron-ore projects (including potential

Nkamouna-Lomié bidders) face a defined but potentially bureaucratic export-approval layer under MINMIDT/SONAMINES architecture.

• Geovic arbitration context: the permit-withdrawal/SONAMINES-transfer precedent (Feb

2025) combined with this trade-flow framework signals Cameroon's full-stack state-control posture over the battery-metals value chain.

Open questions

• Are transition provisions or grace periods built into the decree for existing

operators who were selling minerals under pre-2023 bilateral arrangements?

• How does the MINMIDT export-authorisation interact with the SONAMINES priority-

purchase right in practice — is authorisation automatic once SONAMINES issues a waiver?

• Will Décret 2024/05250/PM (smelting/refining) create a beneficiation-first filter

that constrains raw-mineral export authorisations under this decree?