Building business capacity around the Belinga mining project in Gabon
The client and the challenge
When a large mining project moves into a region, local businesses are not automatically part of it. In Gabon's Ogooué-Ivindo Province, home to the Belinga mining project, many small and medium-sized enterprises lack the management systems, financial structures and strategic capacity to integrate into an industrial value chain. Without targeted support, the economic opportunity such a large-scale investment represents can pass local businesses by entirely.
MDF Benin, in collaboration with MDF AC, implemented this capacity-building programme on behalf of Fortescue Belinga, as part of the company's community engagement strategy for the Belinga Iron Ore mining project.
Approach and results
Before any training began, MDF Benin conducted a needs assessment with the participating organisations. The goal was to understand their challenges and design a programme that matched where they were, not where a generic curriculum would assume them to be.
The programme ran across three components: organisational assessments to map each participant's starting point; a targeted set of group training sessions covering strategic planning, leadership, marketing, financial management, the Business Model Canvas, internal procedures, health, safety and environment, and resource mobilisation; and individual coaching sessions to help business leaders translate what they had learned into concrete changes within their organisations.
Twenty-one SMEs from the Makokou area, mainly operating in construction, public works and green space maintenance participated in the group training. Three were furthermore selected for one-on-one coaching. The Femmes Engagées du G6 (FEG6), an association of women leaders and entrepreneurs from Libreville and Makokou, also received training and individual coaching to support their strategic planning, resource mobilisation, leadership capacity, marketing and financial management.
Through the programme, the participating organisations strengthened their management practices, refined their strategic direction, developed marketing plans and improved their internal procedures. The broader purpose of this work extends beyond individual businesses. By drawing on its expertise in SME development and organisational capacity, MDF Benin contributed to building a local entrepreneurial ecosystem capable of absorbing the economic activity the Belinga project generates — so that local businesses, not only large contractors, can truly be part of the economic growth in the region.
Outcomes from July 2025 to June 2026
• 21 SME founders and 13 women from non-profit organisations participated.
• Fortescue Belinga has recently issued a tender for furniture works for the renovation of their Makokou guesthouse, which was awarded to one of the three SMEs that completed the full programme, including coaching.
• The project can be considered a pilot project, to be followed up with larger numbers of SMEs. MDF is in the process of discussing with Fortescue Belinga how to scale up. This will probably involve collaboration with a Gabon-based SME support organisation to realise the scale-up process and facilitate contextualisation.
