Equatorial GuineaGuinea Ecuatorial

The Bubi, Bantu-speaking farmers, settled Bioko over a thousand years ago and built a kingdom whose rulers resisted outsiders into the 20th century. The mainland was home to Ndowe peoples on the coast and, from the 19th century, Fang moving in from the east. Portuguese navigator Fernão do Pó reached the island in 1472; Portugal handed its claims to Spain in the 1778 Treaty of El Pardo in exchange for territory in South America.

Spain barely ruled at first. Britain used Port Clarence (now Malabo) as a base against the slave trade in 1827–43, and Africans freed from slave ships settled there, forming the English-speaking Fernandino community. From the late 19th century Spain built cocoa plantations on Bioko, worked by labourers recruited — often forcibly — from Liberia and Nigeria. The mainland, Río Muni, was only fully occupied in the 1920s.

Independence on 12 October 1968 brought Francisco Macías Nguema to power. His rule became one of Africa's most brutal: opponents were killed, the Catholic Church and education were suppressed, and up to a third of the population died or fled. His nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, overthrew and executed him in 1979. Obiang has ruled since, the world's longest-serving head of state.

Offshore oil from the mid-1990s turned the country into one of Africa's richest per head. Money built highways, stadiums, the Sipopo conference resort and a new capital, while poverty persisted. A mercenary plot to overthrow Obiang was foiled in 2004. In March 2021 explosions at a military barracks in Bata killed about 100 people. In January 2026 the capital was formally moved from Malabo to Ciudad de la Paz, a planned city in the mainland forest.

About 85% of the population is Fang, dominant on the mainland and in politics; the Bubi are the original people of Bioko; the Ndowe, Bujeba and others live on the mainland coast; the tiny island of Annobón speaks a Portuguese-based creole, Fá d'Ambô. Fernandinos, descendants of freed Africans and West African migrants, speak Pichi, an English-based creole heard on Malabo's streets.

Spanish is the language of school, church and government, which no other African country shares. French was added as an official language in 1998 to ease ties with CEMAC neighbours, and Portuguese in 2010 to join the Portuguese-speaking community. Most people are Catholic, with a strong Protestant minority and traditional practices, such as Bubi ceremonies and Fang ancestor rituals, that survived the Macías years.

Bioko is a volcanic island on the Cameroon Line, the same chain as Mount Cameroon. Pico Basilé rises to 3,011 m above Malabo; the south holds the Gran Caldera de Luba, a collapsed volcano covered in forest, and the Moka highlands with crater lakes. The south-west coast around Ureca receives about 10 m of rain a year, among the highest totals on earth.

Cut off from the mainland when sea levels rose about 10,000 years ago, Bioko developed its own subspecies of monkeys, including the Bioko drill and Bioko red colobus, and endemic birds. Four species of sea turtle nest on the southern beaches. Hunting for bushmeat sold in Malabo's market is the main threat; the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program, run with Drexel University and the national university, monitors primates and turtles.

Oil and gas account for most exports and government revenue. The boom peaked in the 2000s and output has since declined; the government has pushed gas processing, fishing and tourism with limited results.

International investigations have targeted the president's son and vice-president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, over assets in France, Switzerland and the United States. Media and opposition are tightly controlled, elections return the ruling PDGE with near-total majorities, and foreigners are watched closely — the background to the photography rules and checkpoints visitors meet.

Río Muni is a square of rainforest between Cameroon and Gabon, with Bata as its port and commercial centre. New highways link Bata with Mongomo, Ebebiyín and Ciudad de la Paz, but villages still live from cassava plots, cocoa, fishing and forest products.

Monte Alén National Park protects a large block of mainland forest with elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees; facilities for visitors have come and gone with funding. Offshore, Corisco and the Elobey islands have beaches and old Spanish mission buildings.

Home cooking uses fish, cassava, plantain, cocoyam and palm oil, with pepper soup as a late-night restorative and fish steamed in leaves (ndong mba) on the mainland. Spanish habits survive in bakeries, coffee with milk, tortilla and late lunches followed by a siesta.

Malabo mixes a quiet colonial centre with oil-company compounds and new suburbs. Football, church, family events and music — including Afro-Hispanic styles such as the Bubi balele dance — fill weekends.