Equatorial oil wealth sits beside deep rural poverty
Gabon straddles the equator on Central Africa's Atlantic coast beside Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, and Congo. Independence from France in 1960 brought four presidents; Omar Bongo's 1967 ascent built a long dynasty even as petroleum pushed per capita income high while many citizens stayed poor.
Gabon covers 270,000 square kilometres between Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, with São Tomé and Príncipe offshore, and has about 2.6 million people; Libreville is the capital. Behind the coastal plains rise the central highlands of the Chaillu Massif and the Cristal range, with savanna farther east. The name comes from Portuguese gabão, a hooded cloak, which navigators in the 1470s thought the Komo River estuary resembled.
Rainforest hunter-gatherers known as the Bambenga lived here first; Bantu farmers began arriving in the 13th century BCE and, after ironworking took hold in the 7th century CE, largely absorbed them. By the 14th century the Kingdom of Loango ruled the coast. From the late 1500s European merchants bought ivory and captives through local brokers, paying in salt, cloth, mirrors, pots and guns; Mayumba became a major slaving port, and the Orungu kingdom rose around 1700. Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza arrived in 1875 and founded Franceville, and French officers shut the slave warehouses at Cape Lopez and Mayumba in 1887.
Within French Equatorial Africa from 1910, most people fell under the indigénat code, with forced labour and taxes paid in ivory, palm oil and rubber when cash was scarce. Independence came on 17 August 1960. Léon M'ba's move to one-party rule prompted a 1964 coup that French paratroopers reversed within a day. Omar Bongo succeeded him in 1967, founded the ruling PDG in 1968 and held office until his death in 2009; protests in 1990 forced a national conference, a Senate and multiparty elections under a 1991 constitution.
His son Ali Bongo won the 2009 vote amid fraud allegations and deadly riots in Port-Gentil, and survived a failed coup attempt in 2019 while recovering from a stroke in Morocco; the ruling party finally fell in a 2023 coup. In 2021 Gabon became the first African country paid for cutting deforestation emissions, and it joined the Commonwealth in 2022. Oil and foreign investment give it Africa's fourth-highest HDI and a 2023 nominal GDP per head of $10,149, though much of the population remains very poor.
Source: Gabon
