Central African Republic

Central African Republic: Country Intelligence Brief

The Central African Republic's economy was valued at $2.75 billion in 2024, according to World Bank WDI figures, with GDP per capita at $516.16 the same year against a population of 5,330,690. Foreign reserves stood at $489.29 million in 2024, per the same World Bank WDI series, and the IMF World Economic Outlook puts government debt at 64.0% of GDP in 2026 — the highest debt-to-GDP figure in this bundle's fiscal set.

Military capacity

SIPRI's Milex data put military expenditure at $74.19 million in 2025, equivalent to 2.332% of GDP on SIPRI's own GDP series for that year rather than the World Bank GDP figure cited above. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities dataset recorded 9,000 active-duty personnel in 2022 and assigned the Central African Republic a Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score of 0.00025141859 for the same year. Both the personnel figure and the CINC score date to the 2022 COW release and are not refreshed elsewhere in this bundle.

Governance

V-Dem v15's 2025 indicators score the electoral democracy index at 0.293 and the liberal democracy index at 0.102, with the liberal democracy figure running well below the electoral democracy figure. The same release puts state capacity at 0.118, the lowest of the three governance measures supplied. The bundle carries no narrative detail behind these scores beyond the figures themselves, and no earlier V-Dem vintage is included for comparison.

Energy

Our World in Data's energy series records primary energy supply of 0.0052 exajoules in 2023 and electricity generation of 0.14 terawatt-hours in 2023. Oil and gas production are both listed at 0.0 terawatt-hours, dated to 2016 for both series.

Data gaps

Oil and gas production figures are a decade old (2016) against a 2023–2025 vintage for the rest of the bundle, and both read zero; that reading should not be treated as current. Governance scores are single-year (2025) with no prior series to show direction of travel. The bundle contains no figures on trade balance, external debt composition, or security-sector structure beyond personnel strength and CINC.

Sources: World Bank WDI; IMF World Economic Outlook; SIPRI Milex; Correlates of War National Material Capabilities; V-Dem v15; Our World in Data (Energy).