The Bakwé are traditionally subsistence agriculturalists, growing rice and corn once a year for consumption. Cacao, rubber and teak are also grown as cash crops.

Although much is available in the way of manufactured goods today, the Bakwé continue to collect a great deal from the forest for good, medicine, and construction. Though traditionally they live in small, mostly mud and stick houses, thatched with palm shingles that they weave, today it is more and more common to see cement block houses and corrugated metal roofing. Each family will have at least one sleep-house and one kitchen-house. They cook on wood fires in a smoky kitchen-house, where stores of rice are kept dry on overhead racks.