Gabon

Bantu-speaking peoples — Myènè on the coast, Punu and Nzebi in the south, Kota and Téké inland, and from the 18th and 19th centuries the Fang moving south from Cameroon — settled among older forest communities. Stone tools and rock engravings at Lopé show people living in the middle Ogooué valley for hundreds of thousands of years. The coast traded with Portuguese, Dutch and later French and British ships from the late 15th century, first in ivory and wood, then in enslaved people.

France signed treaties with Mpongwe chiefs on the Komo estuary from 1839 and in 1849 settled a group of Africans freed from a captured slave ship there, founding Libreville. Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza travelled up the Ogooué in 1875–78 and 1879–82, opening the interior. Gabon became part of French Equatorial Africa, run through concession companies that forced labour for rubber and timber. Albert Schweitzer opened his mission hospital at Lambaréné in 1913 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952.

Independence came on 17 August 1960 under Léon Mba. When he died in 1967, his vice-president Albert-Bernard (later Omar) Bongo took over and ruled for 42 years, backed by France and by oil money that flowed from the 1970s. His son Ali Bongo succeeded him in 2009 and won disputed elections in 2016 and 2023.

On 30 August 2023, minutes after Ali Bongo was declared re-elected, officers of the Republican Guard seized power and put him under house arrest. Their leader, General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, promised a transition; a new constitution was approved by referendum in November 2024, and he was elected president in April 2025 with about 90% of the vote.

Forest covers close to nine-tenths of Gabon. Because oil and minerals, not farming, paid the bills, clearing stayed limited, and Gabon still holds a large share of the world's forest elephants. In 1999–2000 the ecologist Mike Fay walked across the Congo Basin forests on his 'Megatransect', and his surveys helped persuade President Omar Bongo to create thirteen national parks at once in 2002, covering about 11% of the land.

The parks differ sharply. Loango mixes lagoons, savanna, forest and beaches where elephants, buffalo and hippos walk on the sand. Lopé is a mosaic of forest and savanna and a UNESCO site for both nature and archaeology, famous for hordes of hundreds of mandrills. Ivindo protects waterfalls and the Langoué bai. Pongara and Mayumba hold important nesting beaches for leatherback turtles. In 2017 Gabon added twenty marine protected areas.

Gabon has signed carbon-credit and debt-for-nature deals, including a 2023 debt swap to fund ocean conservation, and has been paid for keeping forest standing. Poaching for ivory hit forest elephants hard around Minkébé in the 2000s; rangers and the national parks agency, ANPN, now run anti-poaching units.

Gabon has about 40 ethnic groups. The Fang are the largest, in the north; Punu, Nzebi, Myènè, Téké, Kota and others fill the south and interior. Forest peoples — Baka, Babongo, Bakoya — are small communities who have lost much access to forest. Libreville has large communities from West Africa, Lebanon and France.

Most Gabonese are Christian, largely Catholic, but many also follow Bwiti, an initiation religion from the Mitsogo and Apindji peoples of the centre that spread to the Fang. Initiates take iboga, the root bark of a forest shrub, in all-night ceremonies with harp music and dance, to meet ancestors. Iboga is a national heritage plant and its export is restricted; the ibogaine it contains can be dangerous for the heart.

The Fang reliquary guardian figures (byeri) and Kota metal-covered figures (mbulu ngulu) were collected in the colonial era and influenced Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani; they now sell for millions at auction, while Gabon asks for the return of key pieces.

Oil discovered offshore from Port-Gentil in the 1950s and 1960s made Gabon one of the richest countries in sub-Saharan Africa per head, and one of the most unequal. Manganese from Moanda and timber complete the export list; the Transgabonais railway, finished in 1986, was built partly to carry them.

The Bongo years were famous for 'Françafrique': close, personal ties with French presidents, oil company Elf and French military bases. Investigations in France have looked at properties bought by the Bongo family in Paris. Oil output has declined since the late 1990s, and governments since 2009 have pushed wood processing, special economic zones and ecotourism.

For visitors, this history explains the prices: hotels and flights are set for the oil and mining industries, and there is little budget tourism infrastructure outside Libreville.

Gabon lies across the equator, with a narrow coastal plain, a band of hills and plateaux inland, and the Ogooué River draining most of the country to a delta near Port-Gentil. The Crystal Mountains in the north-west and the Chaillu massif in the south rise to about 1,000 m; the Batéké plateau in the south-east is grassland.

There are two rainy and two drier seasons. June to August is the long dry season, overcast and cooler, when whales pass the coast; December to January brings a shorter break; the heaviest rains fall in March–May and October–November.

Much of the coast is lagoons and mangroves, and the cold Benguela current pushing north in the dry season brings fish, whales and cooler, grey days.

Gabonese cooking is based on cassava, plantain and fish, flavoured with palm-nut cream (nyembwe) and odika, a paste made from the seeds of wild mango trees, smoked and pressed into blocks — often called 'Gabonese chocolate'. Poulet nyembwe is the national dish. Markets such as Mont-Bouët in Libreville sell atanga (safou) fruit, smoked fish, cassava sticks and, openly, bushmeat.

Libreville life is urban and French-influenced: bakeries, pavement cafés, beach bars along the Bord de Mer and a strong music scene mixing Congolese rumba, Afro-pop and local artists. Outside the capital, villages line the few main roads, and the forest is where food, medicine and ritual come from.