Gabon, officially the Gabonese Republic, is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, lying on the equator. It is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, while sharing a maritime border with São Tomé and Príncipe to the west in the Gulf of Guinea. It has an area of and a population of 2.6 million people. There are coastal plains, mountains (the Cristal Mountains and the Chaillu Massif in the centre), and savanna in the east. Libreville is the capital and largest city; other major cities include Port-Gentil and Franceville.
Gabon's original inhabitants were the Bambenga. In the 13th century BCE, Bantu migrants began settling in the area. The Kingdom of Orungu was established around 1700. France colonised the region in the late 19th century. Since its independence from France in 1960, Gabon has had four presidents. In the 1990s, it introduced a multi-party system and a democratic constitution that aimed for a more transparent electoral process and reformed some governmental institutions. Despite this, the Gabonese Democratic Party remained the dominant party until its removal from power during the 2023 Gabonese coup d'état.
Gabon is a developing country, ranking 108th in the Human Development Index. It is one of the wealthiest countries in Africa in terms of per capita income; however, large parts of the population are very poor. Omar Bongo came to office in 1967 and created a dynasty which stabilized its power through a client network, .
The official language is French, and Bantu ethnic groups constitute around 95% of the population. Christianity is the predominant religion, practised by about 80% of the population. With petroleum and foreign private investment, it has the fourth highest HDI (after Mauritius, Seychelles, and South Africa) and the fifth highest GDP per capita (PPP) of the Sub-Saharan African nations. Gabon's nominal GDP per capita was $10,149 in 2023.
Etymology The country's name derives from the Portuguese word "gabao" (also spelled "Gabão"), meaning "hooded cloak". Portuguese navigators in the 1470s applied the term to the Komo River estuary, whose outline they thought resembled a cloak; the usage later extended to the surrounding region and eventually the modern state.
History
Pre-colonisation The prehistoric inhabitants of Gabon were rainforest hunter-gatherer peoples collectively known as the Bambenga. In the 13th century BCE, Bantu migrants began settling in the area and formed early agricultural communities. With the development of ironworking in the 7th century CE, Bantu tribes grew dominant in the region, largely absorbing and replacing the Bambenga. By the 14th century, the Vili Kingdom of Loango had extended its control northward along the Gabonese coastline.
Between the late 16th and 18th centuries, European merchants frequented the coast for the ivory and slave trades mediated by local brokers. Coastal communities exchanged such commodities and captives from the interior for sea salt, cloth, mirrors, cooking vessels, and weapons (including guns and iron machetes). The importation of a large supply of cheap ironware from abroad displaced the livelihoods of native blacksmiths. Mayumba emerged as a key slaving port in southern Gabon. In the 18th century, a Myènè-speaking thalassocracy known as the Kingdom of Orungu formed amid the rise of an elite of wealthy brokers enriched by international commerce. The kingdom was a maritime trading centre on the Cape Lopez Peninsula that profited from goods such as ivory, copal, ebony, beeswax, and dyewood, but increasingly became dependent on the trade in enslaved people. With the demise of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1870s, the kingdom fell under French control.*
French rule and independence Explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza led his first mission to the Gabon-Congo area in 1875. He founded Franceville and became the colonial governor. Some Bantu groups lived in the area when France officially occupied it in 1885. In 1887, the slave warehouses at Cape Lopez and Mayumba were formally closed by French officers.
In 1910, Gabon became a territory of French Equatorial Africa, a federation that survived until 1958. The colonial regime imposed a two-tier social code, placing the vast majority of the population under the indigénat, which assigned them an inferior legal status, levied heavy taxation, and mandated the corvée (forced labour). Because cash was scarce for most of the colonial era, farmers were forced to pay taxes in ivory, palm oil, and rubber.
During World War II, the state conscripted half of the adult male population for road construction and on plantations managed by the government-sponsored Sociétés Indigènes de Prévoyance. The punishment for refusing the corvée was imprisonment. In 1940, the Allies invaded Gabon to overthrow the pro-Vichy France colonial administration. On 28 November 1958 Gabon became an autonomous republic within the French Community, and on 17 August 1960 it became fully independent.
M'ba rule The first president of Gabon, elected in 1961, was Léon M'ba, with Omar Bongo Ondimba as his vice president. After M'ba acceded to power, the press was suppressed, political demonstrations suppressed, freedom of expression curtailed, other political parties gradually excluded from power, and the constitution changed along French lines to vest power in the presidency. When M'ba dissolved the National Assembly in 1964 to institute one-party rule, an army coup sought to oust him from power and restore parliamentary democracy. French paratroopers flew in within 24 hours to restore M'ba to power. After days of fighting, the coup ended, and the opposition was imprisoned, with protests and riots ensuing.
Bongo rule When M'ba died in 1967, Bongo replaced him as president. In 1968, Bongo declared Gabon a one-party state by dissolving Gabonese Democratic Bloc that had been established by M'ba and establishing the Parti Démocratique Gabonais (PDG). He invited all Gabonese to participate, regardless of previous political affiliation. Bongo sought to forge a single national movement in support of the government's development policies, using PDG as a tool to suppress the regional and tribal rivalries that had divided Gabonese politics in the past. When Bongo was elected president in 1975, he abolished the position of vice president and replaced it with prime minister, who had no right to automatic succession. Bongo was re-elected president to two 7-year terms in 1979 and 1986.
In 1990, economic discontent and a desire for political liberalization provoked demonstrations and strikes by students and workers. In response to grievances by workers, Bongo negotiated with them on a sector-by-sector basis, making wage concessions. He promised to open up PDG and organize a national political conference to discuss Gabon's future political system. PDG and 74 political organizations attended the conference. Participants were essentially divided into 2 "loose" coalitions: the ruling PDG and its allies, and the United Front of Opposition Associations and Parties, consisting of the breakaway Morena Fundamental and the Gabonese Progress Party.
Transitional government The conference approved political reforms, including the creation of a national Senate, decentralization of the budgetary process, freedom of assembly and press, and cancellation of an exit visa requirement. In an attempt to guide the political system's transformation to multiparty democracy, Bongo resigned as PDG chairman and created a transitional government headed by Prime Minister Casimir Oyé-Mba. The Gabonese Social Democratic Grouping (RSDG), as the resulting government was called, was smaller than the previous government and included representatives from some opposition parties in its cabinet. RSDG drafted a provisional constitution that provided a basic bill of rights and an independent judiciary and retained "strong" executive powers for the president. After further review by a constitutional committee and the National Assembly, this document came into force in March 1991.
Opposition to PDG continued after the conference, and in September 1990 two coup d'état attempts were uncovered and aborted. With demonstrations after the death of an opposition leader, the first multiparty National Assembly elections in almost 30 years took place, with PDG garnering a majority. In 1991, the Parliament of Gabon adopted a new constitution, and the country switched to multiparty elections.
Re-elections and rule
Following Bongo's re-election in 1993 with 51% of the vote, opposition candidates refused to validate the election results. Civil disturbances and violent repression led to an agreement between the government and opposition factions to work toward a political settlement. These talks led to the Paris Accords in November 1994, under which some opposition figures were included in a government of national unity. This arrangement broke down, and the 1996 and 1997 legislative and municipal elections provided the background for renewed partisan politics. PDG won in the legislative election, and some cities, including Libreville, elected opposition mayors during the 1997 local election.
Facing a divided opposition, Bongo coasted to re-election in 1998. While some of Bongo's opponents rejected the outcome as fraudulent, some international observers characterized the results as representative, "despite many perceived irregularities". Legislative elections held in 2001–02 were boycotted by several smaller opposition parties and were criticized for their administrative weaknesses, producing a National Assembly dominated by PDG and allied independents. In 2005 Bongo was elected for his sixth term. Opponents claimed that the balloting process was marred by irregularities. There were some instances of violence following the announcement of his win. In the 2006 National Assembly elections, some seats contested because of voting irregularities were overturned by the Constitutional Court, and the subsequent run-off elections in 2007 yielded a PDG-controlled National Assembly.
Death of Bongo and succession
Following the death of Bongo on 8 June 2009 due to cardiac arrest, Gabon entered a period of political transition. Per the amended constitution, Rose Francine Rogombé, president of the Senate, assumed the role of interim president. The subsequent 2009 presidential elections marked a historic moment as they were the first in Gabon's history not to feature Bongo as a candidate. With a crowded field of 18 contenders, including Bongo's son and ruling party leader, Ali Bongo, the elections were closely watched both domestically and internationally.
After a rigorous three-week review by the Constitutional Court, Ali Bongo was officially declared the winner. However, the announcement of his victory was met with scepticism by some opposition candidates, sparking sporadic protests across the country. Discontent was more pronounced in Port-Gentil, where allegations of electoral fraud resulted in violent demonstrations. The unrest claimed four lives and led to significant property damage, including attacks on the French Consulate and a local prison. Subsequently, security forces were deployed, and a curfew remained in effect for over three months. In June 2010, a partial legislative by-election was held, marking the emergence of the Union Nationale (UN) coalition, primarily comprising defectors from the ruling PDG party following Omar Bongo's death. The contest for the five available seats saw both the PDG and UN claiming victory, underscoring the political tensions that persisted in the aftermath of the presidential transition.