Bakouma became a district under the French rule in 1944 and on 23 January 1961, the region eventually became a Sous-Préfecture in the Mbomou prefecture in the newly formed Central African Republic.

[4] Further feasibility studies showed that in the area, there are 41 million pounds of U3O8 with an average grade of 0.27% (which is almost 20 times higher than the resources in Trekkopje, Namibia).

The French Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA) studied the area, as did Alusuisse in the 1970s, which only came to conduct small scale mining.

During the 1990s, former political prisoner Jeanne-Marie Ruth-Rolland was elected deputy leader of Bakouma and lead a gold prospector's consortium.

Due to the increasing world market price on uranium, combined with decreasing stocks, the area gained new interest in the mid-2000s.

Three UN peacekeepers from Burundi were killed in Dekoa and Bakouma on 26 December 2020, one day before the 2020 Central African general election.

It said that the bill on the regulation of exploitation of radioactive minerals, which passed the Parliament on 30 August 2006, would protect from any such damage.

When UraMin arrived with their first equipment to Bangui, the unloading of the airplane was monitored by the Minister of Mining and Energy, Sylvain Ndoutingaï.

When the team later arrived in Bangassou with a second plane, the unloading was monitored by the prefect of Mboumou, Remy Sem Ndouto, along with representatives of the police, the gendarmerie, the customs and the armed forces.

[10] In March 2007, the UraMin site was inspected by the Director for the Ministry of Mining and Energy, Mr Guy Ngaïkomessé.

[13] There is a small hydro-power plant on the left bank of Gboyo, which is owned by the Catholic Diocese of Bangassou.

But when UraMin arrived with its machinery in July 2006, the Antonov freighter had to land at Bangassou,[10] with a considerably longer runway.