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Equatorial Guinea

May 20, 2023

Not to be confused with Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Western New Guinea, or Papua New Guinea.
"EQG" redirects here. For the vehicle, see Mercedes-Benz EQG. For the toyline, see My Little Pony: Equestria Girls.

Equatorial Guinea (Spanish: Guinea Ecuatorial;[a] French: Guinée équatoriale; Portuguese: Guiné Equatorial), also rarely known as Equatoguinea, officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea (Spanish: República de Guinea Ecuatorial, French: République de Guinée équatoriale, Portuguese: República da Guiné Equatorial),[b] is a country on the west coast of Central Africa, with an area of 28,000 square kilometres (11,000 sq mi). Formerly the colony of Spanish Guinea, its post-independence name refers to its location near both the Equator and in the African region of Guinea. As of 2021, the country had a population of 1,468,777,[11] over 85% of whom are ethnically Fang.

Republic of Equatorial Guinea
  • República de Guinea Ecuatorial (Spanish)
  • République de Guinée équatoriale (French)
  • República da Guiné Equatorial (Portuguese)
Motto: Unidad, Paz, Justicia (Spanish)
"Unity, Peace, Justice"
Anthem: Caminemos pisando las sendas de nuestra inmensa felicidad (Spanish)
Let Us Walk Treading the Paths of Our Immense Happiness
CapitalMalabo (current)
Ciudad de la Paz (under construction)
3°45′N 8°47′E / 3.750°N 8.783°E / 3.750; 8.783
Largest cityMalabo
Official languages
Recognised regional languages
List
Ethnic groups
(1994[3])
Religion
(2020)[4]
Demonym(s)
GovernmentUnitary dominant-party presidential republic under a dictatorship[5][6]
• President
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo
Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue
Manuela Roka Botey
LegislatureParliament
• Upper house
Senate
• Lower house
Chamber of Deputies
Independence 
from Spain
• Declared
12 October 1968
Area
• Total
28,050 km2 (10,830 sq mi) (141st)
• Water (%)
negligible
Population
• 2022 estimate
1,679,172[7] (154th)
GDP (PPP)2022 estimate
• Total
$27.959 billion (148th)
• Per capita
$18,127[8]
GDP (nominal)2022 estimate
• Total
$16.012 billion (133rd)
• Per capita
$8,462[9]
HDI (2021) 0.596[10]
medium · 145th
CurrencyCentral African CFA franc (XAF)
Time zoneUTC+1 (WAT)
Date formatdd/mm/yyyy
Driving sideright
Calling code+240
ISO 3166 codeGQ
Internet TLD.gq
  1. Including Equatoguinean Spanish (Español ecuatoguineano).

Equatorial Guinea consists of two parts, an insular and a mainland region. The insular region consists of the islands of Bioko (formerly Fernando Pó) in the Gulf of Guinea and Annobón, a small volcanic island which is the only part of the country south of the equator. Bioko Island is the northernmost part of Equatorial Guinea and is the site of the country's capital, Malabo. The Portuguese-speaking island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe is located between Bioko and Annobón. The mainland region, Río Muni, is bordered by Cameroon on the north and Gabon on the south and east. It is the location of Bata, Equatorial Guinea's largest city, and Ciudad de la Paz, the country's planned future capital. Rio Muni also includes several small offshore islands, such as Corisco, Elobey Grande, and Elobey Chico. The country is a member of the African Union, Francophonie, OPEC and the CPLP.

After becoming independent from Spain in 1968, Equatorial Guinea was ruled by President for life Francisco Macías Nguema until he was overthrown in a coup in 1979 by his nephew Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo who has served as the country's president since. Both presidents have been widely characterized as dictators by foreign observers. Since the mid-1990s, Equatorial Guinea has become one of sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producers.[12] It has subsequently become the richest country per capita in Africa,[13] and its gross domestic product (GDP) adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita ranks 43rd in the world;[14] however, the wealth is distributed extremely unevenly, with few people benefiting from the oil riches. The country ranks 144th on the 2019 Human Development Index,[15] with less than half the population having access to clean drinking water and 7.9% of children dying before the age of five.[16][17]

As a former Spanish colony, the country maintains Spanish as its official language alongside French and (as of 2010) Portuguese,[18] being the only African country (aside from the largely unrecognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) where Spanish is an official language.[19] It is also the most widely spoken language (considerably more than the other two official languages); according to the Instituto Cervantes, 87.7% of the population has a good command of Spanish.[20] The Fang people are the country's dominant ethnic group, comprising more than 85% of the population. The Bubi people, indigenous to Bioko are the second largest group at approximately 6.5% of the population.

Equatorial Guinea's government is authoritarian and has one of the worst human rights records in the world, consistently ranking among the "worst of the worst" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights.[21] Reporters Without Borders ranks Obiang among its "predators" of press freedom.[22] Human trafficking is a significant problem, with the U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report identifying Equatorial Guinea as a source and destination country for forced labour and sex trafficking. The report also noted that Equatorial Guinea "does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so."[23]

History

Main article: History of Equatorial Guinea

Pygmies probably once lived in the continental region that is now Equatorial Guinea, but are today found only in isolated pockets in southern Río Muni. Bantu migrations started probably around 2,000 BC from between south-east Nigeria and north-west Cameroon (the Grassfields).[24] They must have settled continental Equatorial Guinea around 500 BC at the latest.[25][26] The earliest settlements on Bioko Island are dated to AD 530.[27] The Annobón population, originally native to Angola, was introduced by the Portuguese via São Tomé island.[citation needed]

 
Portuguese rule in Equatorial Guinea lasted from the arrival of Fernão do Pó (Fernando Pó) in 1472 until the 1778 Treaty of El Pardo

First European contact and Portuguese rule (1472–1778)

The Portuguese explorer Fernando Pó, seeking a path to India, is credited as being the first European to see the island of Bioko, in 1472. He called it Formosa ("Beautiful"), but it quickly took on the name of its European discoverer. Fernando Pó and Annobón were colonized by Portugal in 1474. The first factories were established on the islands around 1500 as the Portuguese quickly recognized the positives of the islands including volcanic soil and disease-resistant highlands. Despite natural advantages, initial Portuguese efforts in 1507 to establish a sugarcane plantation and town near what is now Concepción on Fernando Pó failed due to Bubi hostility and fever.[28] The main island's rainy climate, extreme humidity and temperature swings took a major toll on European settlers from the beginning, and it would be centuries before attempts restarted.[citation needed]

Early Spanish rule and lease to Britain (1778–1844)

In 1778, Queen Maria I of Portugal and King Charles III of Spain signed the Treaty of El Pardo which ceded Bioko, adjacent islets, and commercial rights to the Bight of Biafra between the Niger and Ogoue rivers to Spain in exchange for large areas in South America that are now Western Brazil. Brigadier Felipe José, Count of Arjelejos sailed from Uruguay to formally take possession of Bioko from Portugal, landing on the island on 21 October 1778. After sailing for Annobón to take possession, the Count died of disease caught on Bioko and the fever-ridden crew mutinied. The crew landed on São Tomé instead where they were imprisoned by the Portuguese authorities after having lost over 80% of their men to sickness.[29] As a result of this disaster, Spain was thereafter hesitant to invest heavily in its new possession. However, despite the setback Spaniards began to use the island as a base for slave trading on the nearby mainland. Between 1778 and 1810, the territory of what became Equatorial Guinea was administered by the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, based in Buenos Aires.[30]

Unwilling to invest heavily in the development of Fernando Pó, from 1827 to 1843, the Spanish leased a base at Malabo on Bioko to the United Kingdom which it had sought as part of its efforts to suppress the transatlantic slave trade.[31] Without Spanish permission, the British moved the headquarters of the Mixed Commission for the Suppression of Slave Traffic to Fernando Pó in 1827, before moving it back to Sierra Leone under an agreement with Spain in 1843. Spain's decision to abolish slavery in 1817 at British insistence damaged the colony's perceived value to the authorities and so leasing naval bases was an effective revenue earner from an otherwise unprofitable possession.[30] An agreement by Spain to sell its African colony to the British was cancelled in 1841 due to metropolitan public opinion and opposition by Spanish Congress.[32]

Late 19th century (1844–1900)

 
Map of the Spanish possessions in 1897, before the Treaty of Paris (1900)

In 1844, the British returned the island to Spanish control and the area became known as the "Territorios Españoles del Golfo de Guinea". Due to epidemics, Spain did not invest much in the colony, and in 1862 an outbreak of yellow fever killed many of the whites that had settled on the island. Despite this, plantations continued to be established by private citizens through the second half of the 19th century.[33]

The plantations of Fernando Pó were mostly run by a black Creole elite, later known as Fernandinos. The British settled some 2,000 Sierra Leoneans and freed slaves there during their rule, and a trickle of immigration from West Africa and the West Indies continued after the British left. A number of freed Angolan slaves, Portuguese-African creoles and immigrants from Nigeria and Liberia also began to be settled in the colony where they quickly began to join the new group.[34] To the local mix were added Cubans, Filipinos, Jews and Spaniards of various colours, many of whom had been deported to Africa for political or other crimes, as well as some settlers backed by the government.[35]

By 1870 the prognosis of whites that lived on the island was much improved after recommendations that they live in the highlands, and by 1884 much of the minimal administrative machinery and key plantations had moved to Basile hundreds of meters above sea level. Henry Morton Stanley had labeled Fernando Pó "a jewel which Spain did not polish" for refusing to enact such a policy. Despite the improved survival chances of Europeans living on the island, Mary Kingsley, who was staying on the island still described Fernando Pó as "a more uncomfortable form of execution" for Spaniards appointed there.[33]

There was also a trickle of immigration from the neighboring Portuguese islands, escaped slaves, and prospective planters. Although a few of the Fernandinos were Catholic and Spanish-speaking, about nine-tenths of them were Protestant and English-speaking on the eve of the First World War, and pidgin English was the lingua franca of the island. The Sierra Leoneans were particularly well placed as planters while labor recruitment on the Windward coast continued, for they kept family and other connections there and could easily arrange a supply of labor. The Fernandinos proved to become effective traders and middlemen between the natives and Europeans.[34] A freed slave from the West Indies by way of Sierra Leone named William Pratt established the cocoa crop on Fernando Pó.[36]

Early 20th century (1900–1945)

Main article: Spanish Guinea
 
Borders after the agreement of 1900 on the land that would become Spanish Guinea, until the independence of 1968

Spain had not occupied the large area in the Bight of Biafra to which it had right by treaty, and the French had busily expanded their occupation at the expense of the territory claimed by Spain. Madrid only partly backed the explorations of men like Manuel Iradier who had signed treaties in the interior as far as Gabon and Cameroon, leaving much of the land out of "effective occupation" as demanded by the terms of the 1885 Berlin Conference. More important events such as the conflict in Cuba and the eventual Spanish–American War kept Madrid busy at an inopportune moment. Minimal government backing for mainland annexation came as a result of public opinion and a need for labour on Fernando Pó.[37]

The eventual treaty of Paris in 1900 left Spain with the continental enclave of Rio Muni, a mere 26,000 km2 out of the 300,000 stretching east to the Ubangi river which the Spaniards had initially claimed.[38] The tiny enclave was far smaller than what the Spaniards had considered themselves rightfully entitled to under their claims and the Treaty of El Pardo. The humiliation of the Franco-Spanish negotiations, combined with the disaster in Cuba led to the head of the Spanish negotiating team, Pedro Gover y Tovar committing suicide on the voyage home on 21 October 1901.[39] Iradier himself died in despair in 1911, and it would be decades before his achievements would be recognised by Spanish popular opinion when the port of Cogo was renamed Puerto Iradier in his honour.[citation needed]

The opening years of the twentieth century saw a new generation of Spanish immigrants. Land regulations issued in 1904–1905 favoured Spaniards, and most of the later big planters arrived from Spain after that.[citation needed] An agreement made with Liberia in 1914 to import cheap labor greatly favoured wealthy men with ready access to the state, and the shift in labor supplies from Liberia to Río Muni increased this advantage. Due to malpractice however, the Liberian government eventually ended the treaty after embarrassing revelations about the state of Liberian workers on Fernando Pó in the Christy Report which brought down the country's president Charles D. B. King in 1930.[citation needed]

 
Corisco in 1910

The greatest constraint to economic development was a chronic shortage of labour. Pushed into the interior of the island and decimated by alcohol addiction, venereal disease, smallpox, and sleeping sickness, the indigenous Bubi population of Bioko refused to work on plantations. Working their own small cocoa farms gave them a considerable degree of autonomy.[citation needed]

By the late nineteenth century, the Bubi were protected from the demands of the planters by Spanish Claretian missionaries, who were very influential in the colony and eventually organised the Bubi into little mission theocracies reminiscent of the famous Jesuit reductions in Paraguay. Catholic penetration was furthered by two small insurrections in 1898 and 1910 protesting conscription of forced labour for the plantations. The Bubi were disarmed in 1917, and left dependent on the missionaries.[38] Serious labour shortages were temporarily solved by a massive influx of refugees from German Kamerun, along with thousands of white German soldiers who stayed on the island for several years.[39]

Between 1926 and 1959 Bioko and Rio Muni were united as the colony of Spanish Guinea. The economy was based on large cacao and coffee plantations and logging concessions and the workforce was mostly immigrant contract labour from Liberia, Nigeria, and Cameroun.[40] Between 1914 and 1930, an estimated 10,000 Liberians went to Fernando Po under a labour treaty that was stopped altogether in 1930.[41]

With Liberian workers no longer available, planters of Fernando Po turned to Rio Muni. Campaigns were mounted to subdue the Fang people in the 1920s, at the time that Liberia was beginning to cut back on recruitment. There were garrisons of the colonial guard throughout the enclave by 1926, and the whole colony was considered 'pacified' by 1929.[42]

 
Inaugural flight with Iberia from Madrid to Bata, 1941

The Spanish Civil War had a major impact on the colony. 150 Spanish whites, including the Governor-General and Vice-Governor-General of Río Muni created a socialist party called the Popular Front in the enclave which served to oppose the interests of the Fernando Pó plantation owners. When the War broke out Francisco Franco ordered Nationalist forces based in the Canaries to ensure control over Equatorial Guinea. In September 1936 Nationalist forces backed by Falangists from Fernando Pó, similarly to what happened in Spain proper took control of Río Muni, which under Governor-General Luiz Sanchez Guerra Saez and his deputy Porcel had backed the Republican government. By November the Popular Front and its supporters had been defeated and Equatorial Guinea secured for Franco. The commander in charge of the occupation, Juan Fontán Lobé was appointed Governor-General by Franco and began to exert more effective Spanish control over the enclave interior.[43]

Rio Muni had a small population, officially a little over 100,000 in the 1930s, and escape across the frontiers into Cameroun or Gabon was very easy. Also, the timber companies needed increasing numbers of workers, and the spread of coffee cultivation offered an alternative means of paying taxes[clarification needed]. Fernando Pó thus continued to suffer from labour shortages. The French only briefly permitted recruitment in Cameroun, and the main source of labour came to be Igbo smuggled in canoes from Calabar in Nigeria. This resolution to the worker shortage allowed Fernando Pó to become one of Africa's most productive agricultural areas after the Second World War.[38]

Final years of Spanish rule (1945–1968)

 
Centro Cultural de España (Cultural Centre of Spain) in Malabo
 
Signing of the independence of Equatorial Guinea by the then Spanish minister Manuel Fraga together with the new Equatorial Guinean president Macías Nguema on 12 October 1968

Politically, post-war colonial history has three fairly distinct phases: up to 1959, when its status was raised from "colonial" to "provincial", following the approach of the Portuguese Empire; between 1960 and 1968, when Madrid attempted a partial decolonisation aimed at keeping the territory as part of the Spanish system; and from 1968 on, after the territory became an independent republic. The first phase consisted of little more than a continuation of previous policies; these closely resembled the policies of Portugal and France, notably in dividing the population into a vast majority governed as 'natives' or non-citizens, and a very small minority (together with whites) admitted to civic status as emancipados, assimilation to the metropolitan culture being the only permissible means of advancement.[44]

This "provincial" phase saw the beginnings of nationalism, but chiefly among small groups who had taken refuge from the Caudillo's paternal hand in Cameroun and Gabon. They formed two bodies: the Movimiento Nacional de Liberación de la Guinea (MONALIGE), and the Idea Popular de Guinea Ecuatorial (IPGE). The pressure they could bring to bear was weak, but the general trend in West Africa was not, and by the late 1960s much of the African continent had been granted independence. Aware of this trend, the Spanish began to increase efforts to prepare the country for independence and massively stepped up development. The Gross National Product per capita in 1965 was $466 which was the highest in black Africa, and the Spanish constructed an international airport at Santa Isabel, a television station and increased the literacy rate to a relatively high 89%. At the same time measures were taken to battle sleeping sickness and leprosy in the enclave, and by 1967 the number of hospital beds per capita in Equatorial Guinea was higher than Spain itself, with 1637 beds in 16 hospitals. All the same, measures to improve education floundered and like in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the end of colonial rule the number of Africans in higher education was in only the double digits, and political education necessary to a functioning state was negligible.[45]

A decision of 9 August 1963, approved by a referendum of 15 December 1963, gave the territory a measure of autonomy and the administrative promotion of a 'moderate' group, the Movimiento de Unión Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial [es] (MUNGE). This proved a feeble instrument, and, with growing pressure for change from the UN, Madrid was gradually forced to give way to the currents of nationalism. Two General Assembly resolutions were passed in 1965 ordering Spain to grant independence to the colony, and in 1966 a UN Commission toured the country before recommending the same thing. In response, the Spanish declared that they would hold a constitutional convention on 27 October 1967 to negotiate a new constitution for an independent Equatorial Guinea. The conference was attended by 41 local delegates and 25 Spaniards. The Africans were principally divided between Fernandinos and Bubi on one side, who feared a loss of privileges and 'swamping' by the Fang majority, and the Río Muni Fang nationalists on the other. At the conference the leading Fang figure, the later first president Francisco Macías Nguema gave a controversial speech in which he claimed that Adolf Hitler had "saved Africa".[46] After nine sessions the conference was suspended due to deadlock between the "unionists" and "separatists" who wanted a separate Fernando Pó. Macías resolved to travel to the UN to bolster international awareness of the issue, and his firebrand speeches in New York contributed to Spain naming a date for both independence and general elections. In July 1968 virtually all Bubi leaders went to the UN in New York to try and raise awareness for their cause, but the world community was uninterested in quibbling over the specifics of colonial independence. The 1960s were a time of great optimism over the future of the former African colonies, and groups that had been close to European rulers, like the Bubi, were not viewed positively.[47]

Independence under Macías (1968–1979)

 
Francisco Macías Nguema, first president of Equatorial Guinea in 1968, became a dictator until he was overthrown in a coup d'état in 1979.

Independence from Spain was gained on 12 October 1968, at noon in the capital, Malabo. The new country became the Republic of Equatorial Guinea (the date is celebrated as the country's Independence Day[48]). Macías became president in the country's only free and fair election.[49] The Spanish (ruled by Franco) had backed Macías in the election due to his perceived loyalty, however while on the campaign trail he had proven to be far less easy to handle than they had expected. Much of his campaigning involved visiting rural areas of Río Muni and promising young Fang that they would have the houses and wives of the Spanish if they voted for him. In the towns he had instead presented himself as the urbane leader who had bested the Spanish at the UN, and he had won in the second round of voting; greatly helped by the vote-splitting of his rivals.[citation needed]

The euphoria of independence became quickly overshadowed by problems emanating from the Nigerian Civil War. Fernando Pó was inhabited by many Biafra-supporting Ibo migrant workers and many refugees from the breakaway state fled to the island, straining it to breaking point. The International Committee of the Red Cross began running relief flights out of Equatorial Guinea, but Macías quickly became spooked and shut the flights down, refusing to allow them to fly diesel fuel for their trucks nor oxygen tanks for medical operations. Very quickly the Biafran separatists were starved into submission without international backing.[50]

After the Public Prosecutor complained about "excesses and maltreatment" by government officials, Macías had 150 alleged coup-plotters executed in a purge on Christmas Eve 1969, all of whom happened to be political opponents.[51] Macias Nguema further consolidated his totalitarian powers by outlawing opposition political parties in July 1970 and making himself president for life in 1972.[52][53] He broke off ties with Spain and the West. In spite of his condemnation of Marxism, which he deemed "neo-colonialist", Equatorial Guinea maintained very special relations with communist states, notably China, Cuba, East Germany and the USSR. Macias Nguema signed a preferential trade agreement and a shipping treaty with the Soviet Union. The Soviets also made loans to Equatorial Guinea.[54]

The shipping agreement gave the Soviets permission for a pilot fishery development project and also a naval base at Luba. In return the USSR was to supply fish to Equatorial Guinea. China and Cuba also gave different forms of financial, military, and technical assistance to Equatorial Guinea, which got them a measure of influence there. For the USSR, there was an advantage to be gained in the War in Angola from access to Luba base and later on to Malabo International Airport.[54]

In 1974, the World Council of Churches affirmed that large numbers of people had been murdered since 1968 in an ongoing reign of terror. A quarter of the entire population had fled abroad, they said, while 'the prisons are overflowing and to all intents and purposes form one vast concentration camp'. Out of a population of 300,000, an estimated 80,000 were killed.[55] Apart from allegedly committing genocide against the ethnic minority Bubi people, Macias Nguema ordered the deaths of thousands of suspected opponents, closed down churches and presided over the economy's collapse as skilled citizens and foreigners fled the country.[56]

Obiang (1979–present)

 
Obiang and U.S. president Obama with their wives in 2014

The nephew of Macías Nguema, Teodoro Obiang deposed his uncle on 3 August 1979, in a bloody coup d'état; over two weeks of civil war ensued until Macías Nguema was captured. He was tried and executed soon afterward, with Obiang succeeding him as a less bloody, but still authoritarian president.[57]

In 1995 Mobil, an American oil company, discovered oil in Equatorial Guinea. The country subsequently experienced rapid economic development, but earnings from the country's oil wealth have not reached the population and the country ranks low on the UN human development index. 7.9% of children die before the age of 5 and more than 50% of the population lacks access to clean drinking water.[17] President Teodoro Obiang is widely suspected of using the country's oil wealth to enrich himself[58] and his associates. In 2006, Forbes estimated his personal wealth at $600 million.[59]

In 2011, the government announced it was planning a new capital for the country, named Oyala.[60][61][62][63] The city was renamed Ciudad de la Paz ("City of Peace") in 2017.

As of February 2016, Obiang is Africa's second-longest serving dictator after Cameroon's Paul Biya.[64]

Equatorial Guinea was elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council 2018–19.[citation needed]

On 7 March 2021, there were munition explosions at a military base near the city of Bata causing 98 deaths and 600 people being injured and treated at the hospital.[65]

In November 2022 Obiang was re-elected in the 2022 Equatorial Guinean general election with 99.7% of the vote amid accusations of fraud by the opposition.[66][67]

Government and politics

Main article: Politics of Equatorial Guinea
 
Highway construction in Ciudad de la Paz in 2010. Ciudad de la Paz will be the future capital of Equatorial Guinea.
 
Presidential palace of Teodoro Obiang in Malabo

The current president of Equatorial Guinea is Teodoro Obiang. The 1982 constitution of Equatorial Guinea gives him extensive powers, including naming and dismissing members of the cabinet, making laws by decree, dissolving the Chamber of Representatives, negotiating and ratifying treaties and serving as commander in chief of the armed forces. Prime Minister Francisco Pascual Obama Asue was appointed by Obiang and operates under powers delegated by the President.[citation needed]

 
Map of Equatorial Guinea made by CIA in 1992

During the four decades of his rule, Obiang has shown little tolerance for opposition. While the country is nominally a multiparty democracy, its elections have generally been considered a sham. According to Human Rights Watch, the dictatorship of President Obiang used an oil boom to entrench and enrich itself further at the expense of the country's people.[68] Since August 1979 some 12 real and perceived unsuccessful coup attempts have occurred.[69]

According to a March 2004 BBC profile,[70] politics within the country were dominated by tensions between Obiang's son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, and other close relatives with powerful positions in the security forces. The tension may be rooted in a power shift arising from the dramatic increase in oil production which has occurred since 1997.[citation needed]

In 2004 a plane load of suspected mercenaries was intercepted in Zimbabwe while allegedly on the way to overthrow Obiang. A November 2004 report[71] named Mark Thatcher as a financial backer of the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt organized by Simon Mann. Various accounts also named the United Kingdom's MI6, the United States' CIA, and Spain as tacit supporters of the coup attempt.[72] Nevertheless, the Amnesty International report released in June 2005[73] on the ensuing trial of those allegedly involved highlighted the prosecution's failure to produce conclusive evidence that a coup attempt had actually taken place. Simon Mann was released from prison on 3 November 2009 for humanitarian reasons.[74]

Since 2005, Military Professional Resources Inc., a US-based international private military company, has worked in Equatorial Guinea to train police forces in appropriate human rights practices. In 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed Obiang as a "good friend" despite repeated criticism of his human rights and civil liberties record. The US Agency for International Development entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Obiang, in April 2006, to establish a social development Fund in the country, implementing projects in the areas of health, education, women's affairs and the environment.[75]

In 2006, Obiang signed an anti-torture decree banning all forms of abuse and improper treatment in Equatorial Guinea, and commissioned the renovation and modernization of Black Beach prison in 2007 to ensure the humane treatment of prisoners.[76] However, human rights abuses have continued. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International among other non-governmental organizations have documented severe human rights abuses in prisons, including torture, beatings, unexplained deaths and illegal detention.[77][78]

In their most recently publishing findings (2020), Transparency International awarded Equatorial Guinea a total score of 16 on their Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). CPI ranks countries by their perceived level of public corruption where zero is very corrupt and 100 is extremely clean. Equatorial Guinea was the 174th lowest scoring nation out of a total of 180 countries.[79] Freedom House, a pro-democracy and human rights NGO, described Obiang as one of the world's "most kleptocratic living autocrats", and complained about the US government welcoming his administration and buying oil from it.[80]

Obiang was re-elected to serve an additional term in 2009 in an election the African Union deemed "in line with electoral law".[81] Obiang re-appointed Prime Minister Ignacio Milam Tang in 2010.[82]

 
According to the BBC, President Obiang Nguema "has been described by rights organisations as one of Africa's most brutal dictators."[83]

In November 2011, a new constitution was approved. The vote on the constitution was taken though neither the text or its content was revealed to the public before the vote. Under the new constitution the president was limited to a maximum of two seven-year terms and would be both the head of state and head of the government, therefore eliminating the prime minister. The new constitution also introduced the figure of a vice president and called for the creation of a 70-member senate with 55 senators elected by the people and the 15 remaining designated by the president. Surprisingly, in the following cabinet reshuffle it was announced that there would be two vice-presidents in clear violation of the constitution that was just taking effect.[84]

In October 2012, during an interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN, Obiang was asked whether he would step down at the end of the current term (2009–2016) since the new constitution limited the number of terms to two and he has been reelected at least 4 times. Obiang answered he refused to step aside because the new constitution was not retroactive and the two-term limit would only become applicable from 2016.[85]

The elections on 26 May 2013 combined the senate, lower house and mayoral contests all in a single package. Like all previous elections, this was denounced by the opposition and it too was won by Obiang's PDGE. During the electoral contest, the ruling party hosted internal elections which were later scrapped as none of the president's favorite candidates led the internal lists. Ultimately, the ruling party and the satellites of the ruling coalition decided to run not based on the candidates but based on the party. This created a situation where during the election the ruling party's coalition did not provide the names of their candidates so effectively individuals were not running for office, instead, the party was the one running for office.[citation needed]

The May 2013 elections were marked by a series of events including the popular protest planned by a group of activists from the MPP (Movement of Popular Protest) which included several social and political groups. The MPP called for a peaceful protest at the Plaza de la Mujer square on 15 May. MPP coordinator Enrique Nsolo Nzo was arrested and official state media portrayed him as planning to destabilize the country and depose the president. However, despite speaking under duress and with clear signs of torture, Nsolo said that they had planned a peaceful protest and had indeed obtained all the legal authorizations required to carry out the peaceful protest. In addition to that, he firmly stated that he was not affiliated with any political party. The Plaza de la Mujer square in Malabo was occupied by the police from 13 May and it has been heavily guarded ever since. The government embarked on a censorship program that affected social sites including Facebook and other websites that were critical to the government of Equatorial Guinea. The censorship was implemented by redirecting online searches to the official government website.[citation needed]

Shortly after the elections, opposition party CPDS announced that they were going to protest peacefully against the 26 May elections on 25 June.[86] Interior minister Clemente Engonga refused to authorise the protest on the grounds that it could "destabilize" the country and CPDS decided to go forward, claiming constitutional right. On the night of 24 June, the CPDS headquarters in Malabo were surrounded by heavily armed police officers to keep those inside from leaving and thus effectively blocking the protest. Several leading members of CPDS were detained in Malabo and others in Bata were kept from boarding several local flights to Malabo.[87]

In 2016 Obiang was reelected for an additional seven-year term, in an election which, according to Freedom House, was plagued by police violence, detentions and torture against opposition factions.[88]

Following the 2022 general elections, President Obiang's Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea holds all of the 100 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and all of those in the Senate. The opposition is almost non-existent in the country and is organized from Spain mainly within the social-democratic Convergence for Social Democracy. Most of the media are under state control; the private television channels, those of the Asonga group, belong to the president's family.[89]

Armed forces

The Armed Forces of Equatorial Guinea consists of approximately 2,500 service members.[citation needed] The army has almost 1,400 soldiers, the police 400 paramilitary men, the navy 200 service members, and the air force about 120 members. There is also a gendarmerie, but the number of members is unknown. The Gendarmerie is a new branch of the service in which training and education is being supported by the French Military Cooperation in Equatorial Guinea.[citation needed]

Geography

Main article: Geography of Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea is on the west coast of Central Africa. The country consists of a mainland territory, Río Muni, which is bordered by Cameroon to the north and Gabon to the east and south, and five small islands, Bioko, Corisco, Annobón, Elobey Chico (Small Elobey), and Elobey Grande (Great Elobey). Bioko, the site of the capital, Malabo, lies about 40 kilometers (25 mi) off the coast of Cameroon. Annobón Island is about 350 kilometers (220 mi) west-south-west of Cape Lopez in Gabon. Corisco and the two Elobey islands are in Corisco Bay, on the border of Río Muni and Gabon.

Equatorial Guinea lies between latitudes 4°N and 2°S, and longitudes 5° and 12°E. Despite its name, no part of the country's territory lies on the equator—it is in the northern hemisphere, except for the insular Annobón Province, which is about 155 km (96 mi) south of the equator.

Climate

 
Köppen climate classification of Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea has a tropical climate with distinct wet and dry seasons. From June to August, Río Muni is dry and Bioko wet; from December to February, the reverse occurs. In between there is gradual transition. Rain or mist occurs daily on Annobón, where a cloudless day has never been registered. The temperature at Malabo, Bioko, ranges from 16 °C (61 °F) to 33 °C (91 °F), though on the southern Moka Plateau normal high temperatures are only 21 °C (70 °F). In Río Muni, the average temperature is about 27 °C (81 °F). Annual rainfall varies from 1,930 mm (76 in) at Malabo to 10,920 mm (430 in) at Ureka, Bioko, but Río Muni is somewhat drier.[90]

Ecology

Equatorial Guinea spans several ecoregions. Río Muni region lies within the Atlantic Equatorial coastal forests ecoregion except for patches of Central African mangroves on the coast, especially in the Muni River estuary. The Cross-Sanaga-Bioko coastal forests ecoregion covers most of Bioko and the adjacent portions of Cameroon and Nigeria on the African mainland, and the Mount Cameroon and Bioko montane forests ecoregion covers the highlands of Bioko and nearby Mount Cameroon. The São Tomé, Príncipe, and Annobón moist lowland forests ecoregion covers all of Annobón, as well as São Tomé and Príncipe.[91]

The country had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.99/10, ranking it 30th globally out of 172 countries.[92]

Wildlife

Main article: Wildlife of Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea is home to gorillas, chimpanzees, various monkeys, leopards, buffalo, antelope, elephants, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, and various snakes, including pythons.[93]

Administrative divisions

Bioko Norte ProvinceBioko Sur ProvinceLitoral Province (Equatorial Guinea)Kié-Ntem ProvinceKié-Ntem ProvinceCentro Sur ProvinceCentro Sur ProvinceCentro Sur ProvinceCentro Sur ProvinceDjibloho ProvinceDjibloho ProvinceDjibloho ProvinceWele-Nzas ProvinceWele-Nzas ProvinceWele-Nzas ProvinceWele-Nzas ProvinceAnnobón Province 
A clickable map of Equatorial Guinea exhibiting its two regions and eight provinces. The island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe is not part of Equatorial Guinea.
Main article: Subdivisions of Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea is divided into eight provinces.[94][95] The newest province is Djibloho, created in 2017 with its headquarters at Ciudad de la Paz, the country's future capital.[96][97] The eight provinces are as follows (numbers correspond to those on the map; provincial capitals appear in parentheses):[94]

  1. Annobón (San Antonio de Palé)
  2. Bioko Norte (Malabo)
  3. Bioko Sur (Luba)
  4. Centro Sur (Evinayong)
  5. Djibloho (Ciudad de la Paz)
  6. Kié-Ntem (Ebebiyín)
  7. Litoral (Bata)
  8. Wele-Nzas (Mongomo)

The provinces are further divided into 19 districts and 37 municipalities.[98]

Economy

Main article: Economy of Equatorial Guinea
 
A proportional representation of Equatorial Guinea exports, 2019

Before independence Equatorial Guinea exported cocoa, coffee and timber, mostly to its colonial ruler, Spain, but also to Germany and the UK. On 1 January 1985, the country became the first non-Francophone African member of the franc zone, adopting the CFA franc as its currency. The national currency, the ekwele, had previously been linked to the Spanish peseta.[99]

 
Gepetrol Tower in Malabo, 2013

The discovery of large oil reserves in 1996 and its subsequent exploitation contributed to a dramatic increase in government revenue. As of 2004,[100] Equatorial Guinea is the third-largest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its oil production has risen to 360,000 barrels per day (57,000 m3/d), up from 220,000 only two years earlier. Oil companies operating in Equatorial Guinea include ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil, Kosmos Energy and Chevron.[101][102]

Forestry, farming, and fishing are also major components of GDP. Subsistence farming predominates. The deterioration of the rural economy under successive brutal regimes has diminished any potential for agriculture-led growth. Agriculture is the country's main source of employment, providing income for 57% of rural households and employment for 52% of the workforce.[103]

In July 2004, the United States Senate published an investigation into Riggs Bank, a Washington-based bank into which most of Equatorial Guinea's oil revenues were paid until recently, and which also banked for Chile's Augusto Pinochet. The Senate report showed at least $35 million siphoned off by Obiang, his family and regime senior officials. The president has denied any wrongdoing. Riggs Bank in February 2005 paid $9 million in restitution for Pinochet's banking, no restitution was made with regard to Equatorial Guinea.[104]

From 2000 to 2010, Equatorial Guinea had the highest average annual increase in GDP (Gross Domestic Product), 17%.[105]

Equatorial Guinea is a member of the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA).[106] Equatorial Guinea is also a member of the Central African Monetary and Economic Union (CEMAC), a subregion that comprises more than 50 million people.[107] Equatorial Guinea tried to be validated as an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)–compliant country, working toward transparency in reporting of oil revenues and prudent use of natural resource wealth. The country obtained candidate status on 22 February 2008. It was then required to meet a number of obligations to do so, including committing to working with civil society and companies on EITI implementation, appointing a senior individual to lead on EITI implementation, and publishing a fully costed Work Plan with measurable targets, a timetable for implementation and an assessment of capacity constraints. However, when Equatorial Guinea applied to extend the deadline for completing EITI validation, the EITI Board did not agree to the extension.[108]

 
Torre de La Libertad ("Freedom Tower")

According to the World Bank, Equatorial Guinea has the highest GNI (Gross National Income) per capita of any African country, 83 times larger than the GNI per capita of Burundi, the poorest country.[109]

Yet despite its impressive GNI figure, Equatorial Guinea is plagued by extreme poverty brought about by wealth inequality. Its Gini coefficient of 65.0 is the highest in the entire world.[citation needed]

The economy of Equatorial Guinea was expected to grow about 2.6% in 2021, a projection based on the successful completion of a large gas project and the recovery of the world economy by the second half of the year. But the country is expected to return to recession in 2022, with a real GDP decline of about 4.4%.[110]

According to the 2016 United Nations Human Development Report, Equatorial Guinea had a gross domestic product per capita of $21,517, one of the highest levels of wealth in Africa. However, it is one of the most unequal countries in the world according to the Gini index, with 70 percent of the population living on one dollar a day.[111] The country ranks 145th out of 189 on the United Nations Human Development Index in 2019.[89]

Hydrocarbons account for 97% of the state's exports and it is a member of the African Petroleum Producers Organization. In 2020, it faces its eighth year of recession, due in part to endemic corruption.[89]

Transportation

 
Malabo International Airport (Aeropuerto de Malabo in Spanish), in Punta Europa, island of Bioko
Main article: Transport in Equatorial Guinea

Due to the large oil industry in the country, internationally recognized carriers fly to Malabo International Airport which, in May 2014, had several direct connections to Europe and West Africa. There are three airports in Equatorial Guinea—Malabo International Airport, Bata Airport and the new Annobón Airport on the island of Annobón. Malabo International Airport is the only international airport.

Every airline registered in Equatorial Guinea appears on the list of air carriers prohibited in the European Union (EU) which means that they are banned from operating services of any kind within the EU.[112] However, freight carriers provide service from European cities to the capital.[113]

Demographics

 
Evolution of the Equatoguinean population between 1960 and 2017. Population in thousands of inhabitants.
Main article: Demographics of Equatorial Guinea
Population in Equatorial Guinea[114][115][116]
Year Million
1950 0.2
2000 0.6
2020 1.4

The majority of the people of Equatorial Guinea are of Bantu origin.[117] The largest ethnic group, the Fang, is indigenous to the mainland, but substantial migration to Bioko Island since the 20th century means the Fang population exceeds that of the earlier Bubi inhabitants. The Fang constitute 80% of the population[118] and comprise around 67 clans. Those in the northern part of Río Muni speak Fang-Ntumu, while those in the south speak Fang-Okah; the two dialects have differences but are mutually intelligible. Dialects of Fang are also spoken in parts of neighboring Cameroon (Bulu) and Gabon. These dialects, while still intelligible, are more distinct. The Bubi, who constitute 15% of the population, are indigenous to Bioko Island. The traditional demarcation line between Fang and 'Beach' (inland) ethnic groups was the village of Niefang (limit of the Fang), east of Bata.

Coastal ethnic groups, sometimes referred to as Ndowe or "Playeros" (Beach People in Spanish): Combes, Bujebas, Balengues, and Bengas on the mainland and small islands, and Fernandinos, a Krio community on Bioko Island together comprise 5% of the population. Europeans (largely of Spanish or Portuguese descent, some with partial African ancestry) also live in the country, but most ethnic Spaniards left after independence.

 
Equatorial Guinean children of Bubi descent

A growing number of foreigners from neighboring Cameroon, Nigeria, and Gabon have immigrated to the country. According to the Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations (2002) 7% of Bioko islanders were Igbo, an ethnic group from southeastern Nigeria.[119] Equatorial Guinea received Asians and native Africans from other countries as workers on cocoa and coffee plantations. Other black Africans came from Liberia, Angola, and Mozambique. Most of the Asian population is Chinese, with small numbers of Indians.

Equatorial Guinea has also been a destination for fortune-seeking European immigrants from Britain, France and Germany. Israelis and Moroccans also live and work here. Oil extraction since the 1990s has contributed to a doubling of the population in Malabo.[citation needed] After independence, thousands of Equatorial Guineans went to Spain. Another 100,000 Equatorial Guineans went to Cameroon, Gabon, and Nigeria because of the dictatorship of Francisco Macías Nguema. Some Equatorial Guinean communities are also found in Latin America, the United States, Portugal, and France.[citation needed]

Languages

 
Floral inscription with the name of the country in Spanish in Malabo
Main articles: Equatoguinean Spanish and Academia Ecuatoguineana de la Lengua Española

Since its independence in 1968, the main official language of Equatorial Guinea has been Spanish (the local variant is Equatoguinean Spanish), which acts as a lingua franca among its different ethnic groups. In 1970, during Macías' rule, Spanish was replaced by Fang, the language of its majority ethnic group, to which Macías belonged. That decision was reverted in 1979 after Macías' fall. Spanish remained as its lone official language until 1998, when French was added as its second one, as it had previously joined the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC), whose founding members are French-speaking nations, two of them (Cameroon and Gabon) surrounding its continental region.[120][3] Portuguese was adopted as its third official language in 2010.[121][122] Spanish has been an official language since 1844. It is still the language of education and administration. 67.6% of Equatorial Guineans can speak it, especially those living in the capital, Malabo.[123] French was only made official in order to join the Francophonie and it is not locally spoken, except in some border towns.

Aboriginal languages are recognised as integral parts of the "national culture" (Constitutional Law No. 1/1998 21 January). Indigenous languages (some of them creoles) include Fang, Bube, Benga, Ndowe, Balengue, Bujeba, Bissio, Gumu, Igbo, Pichinglis, Fa d'Ambô and the nearly extinct Baseke. Most African ethnic groups speak Bantu languages.[124]

 
African languages of Equatorial Guinea and its environment.

Fa d'Ambô, a Portuguese creole, has vigorous use in Annobón Province, in Malabo (the capital), and among some speakers in Equatorial Guinea's mainland. Many residents of Bioko can also speak Spanish, particularly in the capital, and the local trade language Pichinglis, an English-based creole. Spanish is not spoken much in Annobón. In government and education Spanish is used. Noncreolized Portuguese is used as a liturgical language by local Catholics.[125] The Annobonese ethnic community tried to gain membership in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP). The government financed an Instituto Internacional da Língua Portuguesa (IILP) sociolinguistic study in Annobón. It documented strong links with the Portuguese creole populations in São Tomé and Príncipe, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau.[122]

Due to historical and cultural ties, in 2010 the legislature amended article four of the Constitution of Equatorial Guinea, to establish Portuguese as an official language of the Republic. This was an effort by the government to improve its communications, trade, and bilateral relations with Portuguese-speaking countries.[126][127][128] It also recognises long historical ties with Portugal, and with Portuguese-speaking peoples of Brazil, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Cape Verde.

Some of the motivations for Equatorial Guinea's pursuit of membership in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) included access to several professional and academic exchange programmes and facilitated cross-border circulation of citizens.[123] The adoption of Portuguese as an official language was the primary requirement to apply for CPLP acceptance. In addition, the country was told it must adopt political reforms allowing effective democracy and respect for human rights.[129] The national parliament discussed this law in October 2011.[130]

In February 2012, Equatorial Guinea's foreign minister signed an agreement with the IILP on the promotion of Portuguese in the country.[131][132]

In July 2012, the CPLP refused Equatorial Guinea full membership, primarily because of its continued serious violations of human rights. The government responded by legalising political parties, declaring a moratorium on the death penalty, and starting a dialog with all political factions.[122][133] Additionally, the IILP secured land from the government for the construction of Portuguese language cultural centres in Bata and Malabo.[122] At its tenth summit in Dili in July 2014, Equatorial Guinea was admitted as a CPLP member. Abolition of the death penalty and the promotion of Portuguese as an official language were preconditions of the approval.[134]

Religion

Religion in Equatorial Guinea
Religion percent
Roman Catholic
 
 88%
Other (indigenous beliefs / Baháʼí)
 
 5%
Protestant
 
 5%
Muslim
 
 2%
 
Santa Isabel Cathedral in Malabo

The principal religion in Equatorial Guinea is Christianity, the faith of 93% of the population. Roman Catholics make up the majority (88%), while a minority are Protestants (5%). 2% of the population follows Islam (mainly Sunni). The remaining 5% practise Animism, Baháʼí, and other beliefs,[135] and traditional animist beliefs are often mixed with Catholicism.[136]

Health

Main article: Health in Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea's innovative malaria programs in the early 21st century achieved success in reducing malaria infection, disease, and mortality.[137] Their program consists of twice-yearly indoor residual spraying (IRS), the introduction of artemisinin combination treatment (ACTs), the use of intermittent preventive treatment in pregnant women (IPTp), and the introduction of very high coverage with long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets (LLINs). Their efforts resulted in a reduction in all-cause under-five mortality from 152 to 55 deaths per 1,000 live births (down 64%), a sharp drop that coincided with the launch of the program.[138]

In June 2014 four cases of polio were reported, the country's first outbreak of the disease.[139]

Education

Further information: Education in Equatorial Guinea
 
Ministry of Education, Science and Sports (Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Deportes in Spanish)

Among sub-Saharan African countries, Equatorial Guinea has one of the highest literacy rates.[140] According to The World Factbook - Central Intelligence Agency as of 2015, 95.3% of the population age 15 and over can read and write in Equatorial Guinea were respectively literate.[140] Under Francisco Macias, education was neglected, and few children received any type of education. Under President Obiang, the illiteracy rate dropped from 73% to 13%,[3] and the number of primary school students rose from 65,000 in 1986 to more than 100,000 in 1994. Education is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 14.[99]

The Equatorial Guinea government has partnered with Hess Corporation and The Academy for Educational Development (AED) to establish a $20 million education program for primary school teachers to teach modern child development techniques.[141] There are now 51 model schools whose active pedagogy will be a national reform.[needs update]

In recent years,[when?] with change in the economic and political climate and government social agendas, several cultural dispersion and literacy organizations have been founded, chiefly with the financial support of the Spanish government. The country has one university, the Universidad Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial (UNGE), with a campus in Malabo and a Faculty of Medicine located in Bata on the mainland. In 2009 the university produced the first 110 national doctors. The Bata Medical School is supported principally by the government of Cuba and staffed by Cuban medical educators and physicians.[142]

Culture

Main article: Culture of Equatorial Guinea
 
The port of Malabo

In June 1984, the First Hispanic-African Cultural Congress was convened to explore the cultural identity of Equatorial Guinea. The congress constituted the center of integration and the marriage of the Hispanic culture with African cultures.[99]

Tourism

 
Hotel in Sipopo

Equatorial Guinea currently has no UNESCO World Heritage Site or tentative sites for the World Heritage List.[143] The country also has no documented heritage listed in the Memory of the World Programme of UNESCO nor any intangible cultural heritage listed in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List.[144][145]

Tourist attractions are the colonial quarter in Malabo, the southern part of the island Bioko where you can hike to the Iladyi cascades and to remote beaches to watch nesting turtles, Bata with its shoreline Paseo Maritimo and the tower of liberty, Mongomo with its basilica (the second largest Catholic church in Africa) and the new planned and built capital Ciudad de la Paz.

Media and communications

Main articles: Media in Equatorial Guinea and Telecommunications in Equatorial Guinea
 
Edition of the television magazine Malabeando at the Cultural Centre of Spain in Malabo

The principal means of communication within Equatorial Guinea are 3 state-operated FM radio stations. BBC World Service, Radio France Internationale and Gabon-based Africa No 1 broadcast on FM in Malabo. There is also an independent radio option called Radio Macuto, the voice of the voiceless. Radio Macuto is a web-based radio and news source known for publishing news that call out Obiang's regime and call for the mobilisation of the ecuatoguinean community to exercise freedom of speech and engage in politics. There are also five shortwave radio stations. Television Nacional, the television network, is state operated.[3][146] The international TV programme RTVGE is available via satellites in Africa, Europa, and the Americas and worldwide via Internet.[147] There are two newspapers and two magazines.

Equatorial Guinea ranks at position 161 out of 179 countries in the 2012 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index. The watchdog says the national broadcaster obeys the orders of the information ministry. Most of the media companies practice self-censorship, and are banned by law from criticising public figures. The state-owned media and the main private radio station are under the directorship of the president's son, Teodor Obiang.

Landline telephone penetration is low, with only two lines available for every 100 persons.[3] There is one GSM mobile telephone operator, with coverage of Malabo, Bata, and several mainland cities.[148][149] As of 2009, approximately 40% of the population subscribed to mobile telephone services.[3] The only telephone provider in Equatorial Guinea is Orange.

There were more than 42,000 internet users by December 2011.[citation needed]

Music

Further information: Music of Equatorial Guinea

There is little popular music coming out of Equatorial Guinea. Pan-African styles like soukous and makossa are popular, as are reggae and rock and roll. Acoustic guitar bands based on a Spanish model are the country's best-known indigenous popular tradition.

Cinema

In 2014 the South African-Dutch-Equatorial Guinean drama film Where the Road Runs Out was shot in the country. There is also the documentary The Writer From a Country Without Bookstores,[150] that has still to be internationally premiered. It focuses on one of Equatorial Guinea's most translated writers Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel. It is the first feature film openly critical of Obiang's regime.

Sports

See also: Category:Sport in Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea was chosen to co-host the 2012 African Cup of Nations in partnership with Gabon, and hosted the 2015 edition. The country was also chosen to host the 2008 Women's African Football Championship, which they won. The women's national team qualified for the 2011 World Cup in Germany.

In June 2016, Equatorial Guinea was chosen to host the 12th African Games in 2019.

Equatorial Guinea is famous for the swimmers Eric Moussambani, nicknamed "Eric the Eel",[151] and Paula Barila Bolopa, "Paula the Crawler", who attended the 2000 Summer Olympics.[152]

Basketball has been increasing in popularity.[153]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Spanish: [giˈnea ekwatoˈɾjal] ( listen)
  2. ^ Local pronunciation:

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Sources

  •   This article incorporates public domain material from World Factbook. CIA.
  • Max Liniger-Goumaz, Small Is Not Always Beautiful: The Story of Equatorial Guinea (French 1986, translated 1989) ISBN 0-389-20861-2.
  • Robert Klitgaard. 1990. Tropical Gangsters. New York: Basic Books. (World Bank economist tries to assist pre-oil Equatorial Guinea) ISBN 0-465-08760-4.
  • D.L. Claret. Cien años de evangelización en Guinea Ecuatorial (1883–1983) / One Hundred Years of Evangelism in Equatorial Guinea (1983, Barcelona: Claretian Missionaries).
  • Adam Roberts, The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa (2006, PublicAffairs) ISBN 1-58648-371-4.

External links

  • Equatorial Guinea at Curlie
  •   Wikimedia Atlas of Equatorial Guinea
  • Official Government of Equatorial Guinea website
  • Guinea in Figures – Official Web Page of the Government of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea 3 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  • Country Profile from BBC News.
  • Equatorial Guinea. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.
  • from UCB Libraries GovPubs.

1°30′N 10°00′E / 1.500°N 10.000°E / 1.500; 10.000Coordinates: 1°30′N 10°00′E / 1.500°N 10.000°E / 1.500; 10.000

May 20, 2023
equatorial, guinea, confused, with, guinea, bissau, guinea, western, guinea, papua, guinea, redirects, here, vehicle, mercedes, benz, toyline, little, pony, equestria, girls, spanish, guinea, ecuatorial, french, guinée, équatoriale, portuguese, guiné, equatori. Not to be confused with Guinea Bissau Guinea Western New Guinea or Papua New Guinea EQG redirects here For the vehicle see Mercedes Benz EQG For the toyline see My Little Pony Equestria Girls Equatorial Guinea Spanish Guinea Ecuatorial a French Guinee equatoriale Portuguese Guine Equatorial also rarely known as Equatoguinea officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea Spanish Republica de Guinea Ecuatorial French Republique de Guinee equatoriale Portuguese Republica da Guine Equatorial b is a country on the west coast of Central Africa with an area of 28 000 square kilometres 11 000 sq mi Formerly the colony of Spanish Guinea its post independence name refers to its location near both the Equator and in the African region of Guinea As of 2021 update the country had a population of 1 468 777 11 over 85 of whom are ethnically Fang Republic of Equatorial GuineaRepublica de Guinea Ecuatorial Spanish Republique de Guinee equatoriale French Republica da Guine Equatorial Portuguese Flag Coat of armsMotto Unidad Paz Justicia Spanish Unity Peace Justice Anthem Caminemos pisando las sendas de nuestra inmensa felicidad Spanish Let Us Walk Treading the Paths of Our Immense Happiness source Show globeShow map of AfricaCapitalMalabo current Ciudad de la Paz under construction 3 45 N 8 47 E 3 750 N 8 783 E 3 750 8 783Largest cityMalaboOfficial languagesSpanish French 1 Portuguese 2 Recognised regional languagesList FangBubeAnnobonese CreoleKombeKwasioEthnic groups 1994 3 85 7 Fang6 5 Bubi3 6 Ndowe1 6 Annobon1 1 Bujeba1 1 otherReligion 2020 4 88 7 Christianity5 0 No religion4 0 Islam1 7 Traditional faiths0 6 OthersDemonym s EquatoguineanEquatorial GuineanGovernmentUnitary dominant party presidential republic under a dictatorship 5 6 PresidentTeodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo Vice PresidentTeodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue Prime MinisterManuela Roka BoteyLegislatureParliament Upper houseSenate Lower houseChamber of DeputiesIndependence from Spain Declared12 October 1968Area Total28 050 km2 10 830 sq mi 141st Water negligiblePopulation 2022 estimate1 679 172 7 154th GDP PPP 2022 estimate Total 27 959 billion 148th Per capita 18 127 8 GDP nominal 2022 estimate Total 16 012 billion 133rd Per capita 8 462 9 HDI 2021 0 596 10 medium 145thCurrencyCentral African CFA franc XAF Time zoneUTC 1 WAT Date formatdd mm yyyyDriving siderightCalling code 240ISO 3166 codeGQInternet TLD gqIncluding Equatoguinean Spanish Espanol ecuatoguineano Equatorial Guinea consists of two parts an insular and a mainland region The insular region consists of the islands of Bioko formerly Fernando Po in the Gulf of Guinea and Annobon a small volcanic island which is the only part of the country south of the equator Bioko Island is the northernmost part of Equatorial Guinea and is the site of the country s capital Malabo The Portuguese speaking island nation of Sao Tome and Principe is located between Bioko and Annobon The mainland region Rio Muni is bordered by Cameroon on the north and Gabon on the south and east It is the location of Bata Equatorial Guinea s largest city and Ciudad de la Paz the country s planned future capital Rio Muni also includes several small offshore islands such as Corisco Elobey Grande and Elobey Chico The country is a member of the African Union Francophonie OPEC and the CPLP After becoming independent from Spain in 1968 Equatorial Guinea was ruled by President for life Francisco Macias Nguema until he was overthrown in a coup in 1979 by his nephew Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo who has served as the country s president since Both presidents have been widely characterized as dictators by foreign observers Since the mid 1990s Equatorial Guinea has become one of sub Saharan Africa s largest oil producers 12 It has subsequently become the richest country per capita in Africa 13 and its gross domestic product GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity PPP per capita ranks 43rd in the world 14 however the wealth is distributed extremely unevenly with few people benefiting from the oil riches The country ranks 144th on the 2019 Human Development Index 15 with less than half the population having access to clean drinking water and 7 9 of children dying before the age of five 16 17 As a former Spanish colony the country maintains Spanish as its official language alongside French and as of 2010 Portuguese 18 being the only African country aside from the largely unrecognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic where Spanish is an official language 19 It is also the most widely spoken language considerably more than the other two official languages according to the Instituto Cervantes 87 7 of the population has a good command of Spanish 20 The Fang people are the country s dominant ethnic group comprising more than 85 of the population The Bubi people indigenous to Bioko are the second largest group at approximately 6 5 of the population Equatorial Guinea s government is authoritarian and has one of the worst human rights records in the world consistently ranking among the worst of the worst in Freedom House s annual survey of political and civil rights 21 Reporters Without Borders ranks Obiang among its predators of press freedom 22 Human trafficking is a significant problem with the U S Trafficking in Persons Report identifying Equatorial Guinea as a source and destination country for forced labour and sex trafficking The report also noted that Equatorial Guinea does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so 23 Contents 1 History 1 1 First European contact and Portuguese rule 1472 1778 1 2 Early Spanish rule and lease to Britain 1778 1844 1 3 Late 19th century 1844 1900 1 4 Early 20th century 1900 1945 1 5 Final years of Spanish rule 1945 1968 1 6 Independence under Macias 1968 1979 1 7 Obiang 1979 present 2 Government and politics 2 1 Armed forces 3 Geography 3 1 Climate 3 2 Ecology 3 2 1 Wildlife 3 3 Administrative divisions 4 Economy 5 Transportation 6 Demographics 6 1 Languages 6 2 Religion 6 3 Health 6 4 Education 7 Culture 7 1 Tourism 7 2 Media and communications 7 3 Music 7 4 Cinema 7 5 Sports 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Sources 12 External linksHistory EditMain article History of Equatorial Guinea Pygmies probably once lived in the continental region that is now Equatorial Guinea but are today found only in isolated pockets in southern Rio Muni Bantu migrations started probably around 2 000 BC from between south east Nigeria and north west Cameroon the Grassfields 24 They must have settled continental Equatorial Guinea around 500 BC at the latest 25 26 The earliest settlements on Bioko Island are dated to AD 530 27 The Annobon population originally native to Angola was introduced by the Portuguese via Sao Tome island citation needed Portuguese rule in Equatorial Guinea lasted from the arrival of Fernao do Po Fernando Po in 1472 until the 1778 Treaty of El Pardo First European contact and Portuguese rule 1472 1778 Edit The Portuguese explorer Fernando Po seeking a path to India is credited as being the first European to see the island of Bioko in 1472 He called it Formosa Beautiful but it quickly took on the name of its European discoverer Fernando Po and Annobon were colonized by Portugal in 1474 The first factories were established on the islands around 1500 as the Portuguese quickly recognized the positives of the islands including volcanic soil and disease resistant highlands Despite natural advantages initial Portuguese efforts in 1507 to establish a sugarcane plantation and town near what is now Concepcion on Fernando Po failed due to Bubi hostility and fever 28 The main island s rainy climate extreme humidity and temperature swings took a major toll on European settlers from the beginning and it would be centuries before attempts restarted citation needed Early Spanish rule and lease to Britain 1778 1844 Edit In 1778 Queen Maria I of Portugal and King Charles III of Spain signed the Treaty of El Pardo which ceded Bioko adjacent islets and commercial rights to the Bight of Biafra between the Niger and Ogoue rivers to Spain in exchange for large areas in South America that are now Western Brazil Brigadier Felipe Jose Count of Arjelejos sailed from Uruguay to formally take possession of Bioko from Portugal landing on the island on 21 October 1778 After sailing for Annobon to take possession the Count died of disease caught on Bioko and the fever ridden crew mutinied The crew landed on Sao Tome instead where they were imprisoned by the Portuguese authorities after having lost over 80 of their men to sickness 29 As a result of this disaster Spain was thereafter hesitant to invest heavily in its new possession However despite the setback Spaniards began to use the island as a base for slave trading on the nearby mainland Between 1778 and 1810 the territory of what became Equatorial Guinea was administered by the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata based in Buenos Aires 30 Unwilling to invest heavily in the development of Fernando Po from 1827 to 1843 the Spanish leased a base at Malabo on Bioko to the United Kingdom which it had sought as part of its efforts to suppress the transatlantic slave trade 31 Without Spanish permission the British moved the headquarters of the Mixed Commission for the Suppression of Slave Traffic to Fernando Po in 1827 before moving it back to Sierra Leone under an agreement with Spain in 1843 Spain s decision to abolish slavery in 1817 at British insistence damaged the colony s perceived value to the authorities and so leasing naval bases was an effective revenue earner from an otherwise unprofitable possession 30 An agreement by Spain to sell its African colony to the British was cancelled in 1841 due to metropolitan public opinion and opposition by Spanish Congress 32 Late 19th century 1844 1900 Edit Map of the Spanish possessions in 1897 before the Treaty of Paris 1900 In 1844 the British returned the island to Spanish control and the area became known as the Territorios Espanoles del Golfo de Guinea Due to epidemics Spain did not invest much in the colony and in 1862 an outbreak of yellow fever killed many of the whites that had settled on the island Despite this plantations continued to be established by private citizens through the second half of the 19th century 33 The plantations of Fernando Po were mostly run by a black Creole elite later known as Fernandinos The British settled some 2 000 Sierra Leoneans and freed slaves there during their rule and a trickle of immigration from West Africa and the West Indies continued after the British left A number of freed Angolan slaves Portuguese African creoles and immigrants from Nigeria and Liberia also began to be settled in the colony where they quickly began to join the new group 34 To the local mix were added Cubans Filipinos Jews and Spaniards of various colours many of whom had been deported to Africa for political or other crimes as well as some settlers backed by the government 35 By 1870 the prognosis of whites that lived on the island was much improved after recommendations that they live in the highlands and by 1884 much of the minimal administrative machinery and key plantations had moved to Basile hundreds of meters above sea level Henry Morton Stanley had labeled Fernando Po a jewel which Spain did not polish for refusing to enact such a policy Despite the improved survival chances of Europeans living on the island Mary Kingsley who was staying on the island still described Fernando Po as a more uncomfortable form of execution for Spaniards appointed there 33 There was also a trickle of immigration from the neighboring Portuguese islands escaped slaves and prospective planters Although a few of the Fernandinos were Catholic and Spanish speaking about nine tenths of them were Protestant and English speaking on the eve of the First World War and pidgin English was the lingua franca of the island The Sierra Leoneans were particularly well placed as planters while labor recruitment on the Windward coast continued for they kept family and other connections there and could easily arrange a supply of labor The Fernandinos proved to become effective traders and middlemen between the natives and Europeans 34 A freed slave from the West Indies by way of Sierra Leone named William Pratt established the cocoa crop on Fernando Po 36 Early 20th century 1900 1945 Edit Main article Spanish Guinea Borders after the agreement of 1900 on the land that would become Spanish Guinea until the independence of 1968 Spain had not occupied the large area in the Bight of Biafra to which it had right by treaty and the French had busily expanded their occupation at the expense of the territory claimed by Spain Madrid only partly backed the explorations of men like Manuel Iradier who had signed treaties in the interior as far as Gabon and Cameroon leaving much of the land out of effective occupation as demanded by the terms of the 1885 Berlin Conference More important events such as the conflict in Cuba and the eventual Spanish American War kept Madrid busy at an inopportune moment Minimal government backing for mainland annexation came as a result of public opinion and a need for labour on Fernando Po 37 The eventual treaty of Paris in 1900 left Spain with the continental enclave of Rio Muni a mere 26 000 km2 out of the 300 000 stretching east to the Ubangi river which the Spaniards had initially claimed 38 The tiny enclave was far smaller than what the Spaniards had considered themselves rightfully entitled to under their claims and the Treaty of El Pardo The humiliation of the Franco Spanish negotiations combined with the disaster in Cuba led to the head of the Spanish negotiating team Pedro Gover y Tovar committing suicide on the voyage home on 21 October 1901 39 Iradier himself died in despair in 1911 and it would be decades before his achievements would be recognised by Spanish popular opinion when the port of Cogo was renamed Puerto Iradier in his honour citation needed The opening years of the twentieth century saw a new generation of Spanish immigrants Land regulations issued in 1904 1905 favoured Spaniards and most of the later big planters arrived from Spain after that citation needed An agreement made with Liberia in 1914 to import cheap labor greatly favoured wealthy men with ready access to the state and the shift in labor supplies from Liberia to Rio Muni increased this advantage Due to malpractice however the Liberian government eventually ended the treaty after embarrassing revelations about the state of Liberian workers on Fernando Po in the Christy Report which brought down the country s president Charles D B King in 1930 citation needed Corisco in 1910 The greatest constraint to economic development was a chronic shortage of labour Pushed into the interior of the island and decimated by alcohol addiction venereal disease smallpox and sleeping sickness the indigenous Bubi population of Bioko refused to work on plantations Working their own small cocoa farms gave them a considerable degree of autonomy citation needed By the late nineteenth century the Bubi were protected from the demands of the planters by Spanish Claretian missionaries who were very influential in the colony and eventually organised the Bubi into little mission theocracies reminiscent of the famous Jesuit reductions in Paraguay Catholic penetration was furthered by two small insurrections in 1898 and 1910 protesting conscription of forced labour for the plantations The Bubi were disarmed in 1917 and left dependent on the missionaries 38 Serious labour shortages were temporarily solved by a massive influx of refugees from German Kamerun along with thousands of white German soldiers who stayed on the island for several years 39 Between 1926 and 1959 Bioko and Rio Muni were united as the colony of Spanish Guinea The economy was based on large cacao and coffee plantations and logging concessions and the workforce was mostly immigrant contract labour from Liberia Nigeria and Cameroun 40 Between 1914 and 1930 an estimated 10 000 Liberians went to Fernando Po under a labour treaty that was stopped altogether in 1930 41 With Liberian workers no longer available planters of Fernando Po turned to Rio Muni Campaigns were mounted to subdue the Fang people in the 1920s at the time that Liberia was beginning to cut back on recruitment There were garrisons of the colonial guard throughout the enclave by 1926 and the whole colony was considered pacified by 1929 42 Inaugural flight with Iberia from Madrid to Bata 1941 The Spanish Civil War had a major impact on the colony 150 Spanish whites including the Governor General and Vice Governor General of Rio Muni created a socialist party called the Popular Front in the enclave which served to oppose the interests of the Fernando Po plantation owners When the War broke out Francisco Franco ordered Nationalist forces based in the Canaries to ensure control over Equatorial Guinea In September 1936 Nationalist forces backed by Falangists from Fernando Po similarly to what happened in Spain proper took control of Rio Muni which under Governor General Luiz Sanchez Guerra Saez and his deputy Porcel had backed the Republican government By November the Popular Front and its supporters had been defeated and Equatorial Guinea secured for Franco The commander in charge of the occupation Juan Fontan Lobe was appointed Governor General by Franco and began to exert more effective Spanish control over the enclave interior 43 Rio Muni had a small population officially a little over 100 000 in the 1930s and escape across the frontiers into Cameroun or Gabon was very easy Also the timber companies needed increasing numbers of workers and the spread of coffee cultivation offered an alternative means of paying taxes clarification needed Fernando Po thus continued to suffer from labour shortages The French only briefly permitted recruitment in Cameroun and the main source of labour came to be Igbo smuggled in canoes from Calabar in Nigeria This resolution to the worker shortage allowed Fernando Po to become one of Africa s most productive agricultural areas after the Second World War 38 Final years of Spanish rule 1945 1968 Edit Centro Cultural de Espana Cultural Centre of Spain in Malabo Signing of the independence of Equatorial Guinea by the then Spanish minister Manuel Fraga together with the new Equatorial Guinean president Macias Nguema on 12 October 1968 Politically post war colonial history has three fairly distinct phases up to 1959 when its status was raised from colonial to provincial following the approach of the Portuguese Empire between 1960 and 1968 when Madrid attempted a partial decolonisation aimed at keeping the territory as part of the Spanish system and from 1968 on after the territory became an independent republic The first phase consisted of little more than a continuation of previous policies these closely resembled the policies of Portugal and France notably in dividing the population into a vast majority governed as natives or non citizens and a very small minority together with whites admitted to civic status as emancipados assimilation to the metropolitan culture being the only permissible means of advancement 44 This provincial phase saw the beginnings of nationalism but chiefly among small groups who had taken refuge from the Caudillo s paternal hand in Cameroun and Gabon They formed two bodies the Movimiento Nacional de Liberacion de la Guinea MONALIGE and the Idea Popular de Guinea Ecuatorial IPGE The pressure they could bring to bear was weak but the general trend in West Africa was not and by the late 1960s much of the African continent had been granted independence Aware of this trend the Spanish began to increase efforts to prepare the country for independence and massively stepped up development The Gross National Product per capita in 1965 was 466 which was the highest in black Africa and the Spanish constructed an international airport at Santa Isabel a television station and increased the literacy rate to a relatively high 89 At the same time measures were taken to battle sleeping sickness and leprosy in the enclave and by 1967 the number of hospital beds per capita in Equatorial Guinea was higher than Spain itself with 1637 beds in 16 hospitals All the same measures to improve education floundered and like in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the end of colonial rule the number of Africans in higher education was in only the double digits and political education necessary to a functioning state was negligible 45 A decision of 9 August 1963 approved by a referendum of 15 December 1963 gave the territory a measure of autonomy and the administrative promotion of a moderate group the Movimiento de Union Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial es MUNGE This proved a feeble instrument and with growing pressure for change from the UN Madrid was gradually forced to give way to the currents of nationalism Two General Assembly resolutions were passed in 1965 ordering Spain to grant independence to the colony and in 1966 a UN Commission toured the country before recommending the same thing In response the Spanish declared that they would hold a constitutional convention on 27 October 1967 to negotiate a new constitution for an independent Equatorial Guinea The conference was attended by 41 local delegates and 25 Spaniards The Africans were principally divided between Fernandinos and Bubi on one side who feared a loss of privileges and swamping by the Fang majority and the Rio Muni Fang nationalists on the other At the conference the leading Fang figure the later first president Francisco Macias Nguema gave a controversial speech in which he claimed that Adolf Hitler had saved Africa 46 After nine sessions the conference was suspended due to deadlock between the unionists and separatists who wanted a separate Fernando Po Macias resolved to travel to the UN to bolster international awareness of the issue and his firebrand speeches in New York contributed to Spain naming a date for both independence and general elections In July 1968 virtually all Bubi leaders went to the UN in New York to try and raise awareness for their cause but the world community was uninterested in quibbling over the specifics of colonial independence The 1960s were a time of great optimism over the future of the former African colonies and groups that had been close to European rulers like the Bubi were not viewed positively 47 Independence under Macias 1968 1979 Edit Francisco Macias Nguema first president of Equatorial Guinea in 1968 became a dictator until he was overthrown in a coup d etat in 1979 Independence from Spain was gained on 12 October 1968 at noon in the capital Malabo The new country became the Republic of Equatorial Guinea the date is celebrated as the country s Independence Day 48 Macias became president in the country s only free and fair election 49 The Spanish ruled by Franco had backed Macias in the election due to his perceived loyalty however while on the campaign trail he had proven to be far less easy to handle than they had expected Much of his campaigning involved visiting rural areas of Rio Muni and promising young Fang that they would have the houses and wives of the Spanish if they voted for him In the towns he had instead presented himself as the urbane leader who had bested the Spanish at the UN and he had won in the second round of voting greatly helped by the vote splitting of his rivals citation needed The euphoria of independence became quickly overshadowed by problems emanating from the Nigerian Civil War Fernando Po was inhabited by many Biafra supporting Ibo migrant workers and many refugees from the breakaway state fled to the island straining it to breaking point The International Committee of the Red Cross began running relief flights out of Equatorial Guinea but Macias quickly became spooked and shut the flights down refusing to allow them to fly diesel fuel for their trucks nor oxygen tanks for medical operations Very quickly the Biafran separatists were starved into submission without international backing 50 After the Public Prosecutor complained about excesses and maltreatment by government officials Macias had 150 alleged coup plotters executed in a purge on Christmas Eve 1969 all of whom happened to be political opponents 51 Macias Nguema further consolidated his totalitarian powers by outlawing opposition political parties in July 1970 and making himself president for life in 1972 52 53 He broke off ties with Spain and the West In spite of his condemnation of Marxism which he deemed neo colonialist Equatorial Guinea maintained very special relations with communist states notably China Cuba East Germany and the USSR Macias Nguema signed a preferential trade agreement and a shipping treaty with the Soviet Union The Soviets also made loans to Equatorial Guinea 54 The shipping agreement gave the Soviets permission for a pilot fishery development project and also a naval base at Luba In return the USSR was to supply fish to Equatorial Guinea China and Cuba also gave different forms of financial military and technical assistance to Equatorial Guinea which got them a measure of influence there For the USSR there was an advantage to be gained in the War in Angola from access to Luba base and later on to Malabo International Airport 54 In 1974 the World Council of Churches affirmed that large numbers of people had been murdered since 1968 in an ongoing reign of terror A quarter of the entire population had fled abroad they said while the prisons are overflowing and to all intents and purposes form one vast concentration camp Out of a population of 300 000 an estimated 80 000 were killed 55 Apart from allegedly committing genocide against the ethnic minority Bubi people Macias Nguema ordered the deaths of thousands of suspected opponents closed down churches and presided over the economy s collapse as skilled citizens and foreigners fled the country 56 Obiang 1979 present Edit Obiang and U S president Obama with their wives in 2014 The nephew of Macias Nguema Teodoro Obiang deposed his uncle on 3 August 1979 in a bloody coup d etat over two weeks of civil war ensued until Macias Nguema was captured He was tried and executed soon afterward with Obiang succeeding him as a less bloody but still authoritarian president 57 In 1995 Mobil an American oil company discovered oil in Equatorial Guinea The country subsequently experienced rapid economic development but earnings from the country s oil wealth have not reached the population and the country ranks low on the UN human development index 7 9 of children die before the age of 5 and more than 50 of the population lacks access to clean drinking water 17 President Teodoro Obiang is widely suspected of using the country s oil wealth to enrich himself 58 and his associates In 2006 Forbes estimated his personal wealth at 600 million 59 In 2011 the government announced it was planning a new capital for the country named Oyala 60 61 62 63 The city was renamed Ciudad de la Paz City of Peace in 2017 As of February 2016 update Obiang is Africa s second longest serving dictator after Cameroon s Paul Biya 64 Equatorial Guinea was elected as a non permanent member of the United Nations Security Council 2018 19 citation needed On 7 March 2021 there were munition explosions at a military base near the city of Bata causing 98 deaths and 600 people being injured and treated at the hospital 65 In November 2022 Obiang was re elected in the 2022 Equatorial Guinean general election with 99 7 of the vote amid accusations of fraud by the opposition 66 67 Government and politics EditMain article Politics of Equatorial Guinea Highway construction in Ciudad de la Paz in 2010 Ciudad de la Paz will be the future capital of Equatorial Guinea Presidential palace of Teodoro Obiang in Malabo The current president of Equatorial Guinea is Teodoro Obiang The 1982 constitution of Equatorial Guinea gives him extensive powers including naming and dismissing members of the cabinet making laws by decree dissolving the Chamber of Representatives negotiating and ratifying treaties and serving as commander in chief of the armed forces Prime Minister Francisco Pascual Obama Asue was appointed by Obiang and operates under powers delegated by the President citation needed Map of Equatorial Guinea made by CIA in 1992 During the four decades of his rule Obiang has shown little tolerance for opposition While the country is nominally a multiparty democracy its elections have generally been considered a sham According to Human Rights Watch the dictatorship of President Obiang used an oil boom to entrench and enrich itself further at the expense of the country s people 68 Since August 1979 some 12 real and perceived unsuccessful coup attempts have occurred 69 According to a March 2004 BBC profile 70 politics within the country were dominated by tensions between Obiang s son Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue and other close relatives with powerful positions in the security forces The tension may be rooted in a power shift arising from the dramatic increase in oil production which has occurred since 1997 citation needed In 2004 a plane load of suspected mercenaries was intercepted in Zimbabwe while allegedly on the way to overthrow Obiang A November 2004 report 71 named Mark Thatcher as a financial backer of the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d etat attempt organized by Simon Mann Various accounts also named the United Kingdom s MI6 the United States CIA and Spain as tacit supporters of the coup attempt 72 Nevertheless the Amnesty International report released in June 2005 73 on the ensuing trial of those allegedly involved highlighted the prosecution s failure to produce conclusive evidence that a coup attempt had actually taken place Simon Mann was released from prison on 3 November 2009 for humanitarian reasons 74 Since 2005 Military Professional Resources Inc a US based international private military company has worked in Equatorial Guinea to train police forces in appropriate human rights practices In 2006 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed Obiang as a good friend despite repeated criticism of his human rights and civil liberties record The US Agency for International Development entered into a memorandum of understanding MOU with Obiang in April 2006 to establish a social development Fund in the country implementing projects in the areas of health education women s affairs and the environment 75 In 2006 Obiang signed an anti torture decree banning all forms of abuse and improper treatment in Equatorial Guinea and commissioned the renovation and modernization of Black Beach prison in 2007 to ensure the humane treatment of prisoners 76 However human rights abuses have continued Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International among other non governmental organizations have documented severe human rights abuses in prisons including torture beatings unexplained deaths and illegal detention 77 78 In their most recently publishing findings 2020 Transparency International awarded Equatorial Guinea a total score of 16 on their Corruption Perceptions Index CPI CPI ranks countries by their perceived level of public corruption where zero is very corrupt and 100 is extremely clean Equatorial Guinea was the 174th lowest scoring nation out of a total of 180 countries 79 Freedom House a pro democracy and human rights NGO described Obiang as one of the world s most kleptocratic living autocrats and complained about the US government welcoming his administration and buying oil from it 80 Obiang was re elected to serve an additional term in 2009 in an election the African Union deemed in line with electoral law 81 Obiang re appointed Prime Minister Ignacio Milam Tang in 2010 82 According to the BBC President Obiang Nguema has been described by rights organisations as one of Africa s most brutal dictators 83 In November 2011 a new constitution was approved The vote on the constitution was taken though neither the text or its content was revealed to the public before the vote Under the new constitution the president was limited to a maximum of two seven year terms and would be both the head of state and head of the government therefore eliminating the prime minister The new constitution also introduced the figure of a vice president and called for the creation of a 70 member senate with 55 senators elected by the people and the 15 remaining designated by the president Surprisingly in the following cabinet reshuffle it was announced that there would be two vice presidents in clear violation of the constitution that was just taking effect 84 In October 2012 during an interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN Obiang was asked whether he would step down at the end of the current term 2009 2016 since the new constitution limited the number of terms to two and he has been reelected at least 4 times Obiang answered he refused to step aside because the new constitution was not retroactive and the two term limit would only become applicable from 2016 85 The elections on 26 May 2013 combined the senate lower house and mayoral contests all in a single package Like all previous elections this was denounced by the opposition and it too was won by Obiang s PDGE During the electoral contest the ruling party hosted internal elections which were later scrapped as none of the president s favorite candidates led the internal lists Ultimately the ruling party and the satellites of the ruling coalition decided to run not based on the candidates but based on the party This created a situation where during the election the ruling party s coalition did not provide the names of their candidates so effectively individuals were not running for office instead the party was the one running for office citation needed The May 2013 elections were marked by a series of events including the popular protest planned by a group of activists from the MPP Movement of Popular Protest which included several social and political groups The MPP called for a peaceful protest at the Plaza de la Mujer square on 15 May MPP coordinator Enrique Nsolo Nzo was arrested and official state media portrayed him as planning to destabilize the country and depose the president However despite speaking under duress and with clear signs of torture Nsolo said that they had planned a peaceful protest and had indeed obtained all the legal authorizations required to carry out the peaceful protest In addition to that he firmly stated that he was not affiliated with any political party The Plaza de la Mujer square in Malabo was occupied by the police from 13 May and it has been heavily guarded ever since The government embarked on a censorship program that affected social sites including Facebook and other websites that were critical to the government of Equatorial Guinea The censorship was implemented by redirecting online searches to the official government website citation needed Shortly after the elections opposition party CPDS announced that they were going to protest peacefully against the 26 May elections on 25 June 86 Interior minister Clemente Engonga refused to authorise the protest on the grounds that it could destabilize the country and CPDS decided to go forward claiming constitutional right On the night of 24 June the CPDS headquarters in Malabo were surrounded by heavily armed police officers to keep those inside from leaving and thus effectively blocking the protest Several leading members of CPDS were detained in Malabo and others in Bata were kept from boarding several local flights to Malabo 87 In 2016 Obiang was reelected for an additional seven year term in an election which according to Freedom House was plagued by police violence detentions and torture against opposition factions 88 Following the 2022 general elections President Obiang s Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea holds all of the 100 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and all of those in the Senate The opposition is almost non existent in the country and is organized from Spain mainly within the social democratic Convergence for Social Democracy Most of the media are under state control the private television channels those of the Asonga group belong to the president s family 89 Armed forces Edit An Antonov An 72P of the Armed Forces of Equatorial Guinea on lift off The Armed Forces of Equatorial Guinea consists of approximately 2 500 service members citation needed The army has almost 1 400 soldiers the police 400 paramilitary men the navy 200 service members and the air force about 120 members There is also a gendarmerie but the number of members is unknown The Gendarmerie is a new branch of the service in which training and education is being supported by the French Military Cooperation in Equatorial Guinea citation needed Geography EditMain article Geography of Equatorial Guinea Equatorial Guinea is on the west coast of Central Africa The country consists of a mainland territory Rio Muni which is bordered by Cameroon to the north and Gabon to the east and south and five small islands Bioko Corisco Annobon Elobey Chico Small Elobey and Elobey Grande Great Elobey Bioko the site of the capital Malabo lies about 40 kilometers 25 mi off the coast of Cameroon Annobon Island is about 350 kilometers 220 mi west south west of Cape Lopez in Gabon Corisco and the two Elobey islands are in Corisco Bay on the border of Rio Muni and Gabon Equatorial Guinea lies between latitudes 4 N and 2 S and longitudes 5 and 12 E Despite its name no part of the country s territory lies on the equator it is in the northern hemisphere except for the insular Annobon Province which is about 155 km 96 mi south of the equator Climate Edit Koppen climate classification of Equatorial Guinea Equatorial Guinea has a tropical climate with distinct wet and dry seasons From June to August Rio Muni is dry and Bioko wet from December to February the reverse occurs In between there is gradual transition Rain or mist occurs daily on Annobon where a cloudless day has never been registered The temperature at Malabo Bioko ranges from 16 C 61 F to 33 C 91 F though on the southern Moka Plateau normal high temperatures are only 21 C 70 F In Rio Muni the average temperature is about 27 C 81 F Annual rainfall varies from 1 930 mm 76 in at Malabo to 10 920 mm 430 in at Ureka Bioko but Rio Muni is somewhat drier 90 Ecology Edit Equatorial Guinea spans several ecoregions Rio Muni region lies within the Atlantic Equatorial coastal forests ecoregion except for patches of Central African mangroves on the coast especially in the Muni River estuary The Cross Sanaga Bioko coastal forests ecoregion covers most of Bioko and the adjacent portions of Cameroon and Nigeria on the African mainland and the Mount Cameroon and Bioko montane forests ecoregion covers the highlands of Bioko and nearby Mount Cameroon The Sao Tome Principe and Annobon moist lowland forests ecoregion covers all of Annobon as well as Sao Tome and Principe 91 The country had a 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7 99 10 ranking it 30th globally out of 172 countries 92 Ecology of Equatorial Guinea Annobon Islote Horacio Near Ciudad de la Paz Monte Alen National Park Pico BasileWildlife Edit Main article Wildlife of Equatorial Guinea Equatorial Guinea is home to gorillas chimpanzees various monkeys leopards buffalo antelope elephants hippopotamuses crocodiles and various snakes including pythons 93 Wildlife of Equatorial Guinea Dissotis Soybean Spectral pygmy chameleon Yellow billed turaco Western gorillaAdministrative divisions Edit A clickable map of Equatorial Guinea exhibiting its two regions and eight provinces The island nation of Sao Tome and Principe is not part of Equatorial Guinea Main article Subdivisions of Equatorial Guinea Equatorial Guinea is divided into eight provinces 94 95 The newest province is Djibloho created in 2017 with its headquarters at Ciudad de la Paz the country s future capital 96 97 The eight provinces are as follows numbers correspond to those on the map provincial capitals appear in parentheses 94 Annobon San Antonio de Pale Bioko Norte Malabo Bioko Sur Luba Centro Sur Evinayong Djibloho Ciudad de la Paz Kie Ntem Ebebiyin Litoral Bata Wele Nzas Mongomo The provinces are further divided into 19 districts and 37 municipalities 98 Economy EditMain article Economy of Equatorial Guinea A proportional representation of Equatorial Guinea exports 2019 Before independence Equatorial Guinea exported cocoa coffee and timber mostly to its colonial ruler Spain but also to Germany and the UK On 1 January 1985 the country became the first non Francophone African member of the franc zone adopting the CFA franc as its currency The national currency the ekwele had previously been linked to the Spanish peseta 99 Gepetrol Tower in Malabo 2013 The discovery of large oil reserves in 1996 and its subsequent exploitation contributed to a dramatic increase in government revenue As of 2004 update 100 Equatorial Guinea is the third largest oil producer in Sub Saharan Africa Its oil production has risen to 360 000 barrels per day 57 000 m3 d up from 220 000 only two years earlier Oil companies operating in Equatorial Guinea include ExxonMobil Marathon Oil Kosmos Energy and Chevron 101 102 Forestry farming and fishing are also major components of GDP Subsistence farming predominates The deterioration of the rural economy under successive brutal regimes has diminished any potential for agriculture led growth Agriculture is the country s main source of employment providing income for 57 of rural households and employment for 52 of the workforce 103 In July 2004 the United States Senate published an investigation into Riggs Bank a Washington based bank into which most of Equatorial Guinea s oil revenues were paid until recently and which also banked for Chile s Augusto Pinochet The Senate report showed at least 35 million siphoned off by Obiang his family and regime senior officials The president has denied any wrongdoing Riggs Bank in February 2005 paid 9 million in restitution for Pinochet s banking no restitution was made with regard to Equatorial Guinea 104 From 2000 to 2010 Equatorial Guinea had the highest average annual increase in GDP Gross Domestic Product 17 105 Equatorial Guinea is a member of the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa OHADA 106 Equatorial Guinea is also a member of the Central African Monetary and Economic Union CEMAC a subregion that comprises more than 50 million people 107 Equatorial Guinea tried to be validated as an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative EITI compliant country working toward transparency in reporting of oil revenues and prudent use of natural resource wealth The country obtained candidate status on 22 February 2008 It was then required to meet a number of obligations to do so including committing to working with civil society and companies on EITI implementation appointing a senior individual to lead on EITI implementation and publishing a fully costed Work Plan with measurable targets a timetable for implementation and an assessment of capacity constraints However when Equatorial Guinea applied to extend the deadline for completing EITI validation the EITI Board did not agree to the extension 108 Torre de La Libertad Freedom Tower According to the World Bank Equatorial Guinea has the highest GNI Gross National Income per capita of any African country 83 times larger than the GNI per capita of Burundi the poorest country 109 Yet despite its impressive GNI figure Equatorial Guinea is plagued by extreme poverty brought about by wealth inequality Its Gini coefficient of 65 0 is the highest in the entire world citation needed The economy of Equatorial Guinea was expected to grow about 2 6 in 2021 a projection based on the successful completion of a large gas project and the recovery of the world economy by the second half of the year But the country is expected to return to recession in 2022 with a real GDP decline of about 4 4 110 According to the 2016 United Nations Human Development Report Equatorial Guinea had a gross domestic product per capita of 21 517 one of the highest levels of wealth in Africa However it is one of the most unequal countries in the world according to the Gini index with 70 percent of the population living on one dollar a day 111 The country ranks 145th out of 189 on the United Nations Human Development Index in 2019 89 Hydrocarbons account for 97 of the state s exports and it is a member of the African Petroleum Producers Organization In 2020 it faces its eighth year of recession due in part to endemic corruption 89 Transportation Edit Malabo International Airport Aeropuerto de Malabo in Spanish in Punta Europa island of Bioko Main article Transport in Equatorial Guinea Due to the large oil industry in the country internationally recognized carriers fly to Malabo International Airport which in May 2014 had several direct connections to Europe and West Africa There are three airports in Equatorial Guinea Malabo International Airport Bata Airport and the new Annobon Airport on the island of Annobon Malabo International Airport is the only international airport Every airline registered in Equatorial Guinea appears on the list of air carriers prohibited in the European Union EU which means that they are banned from operating services of any kind within the EU 112 However freight carriers provide service from European cities to the capital 113 Demographics Edit Evolution of the Equatoguinean population between 1960 and 2017 Population in thousands of inhabitants Main article Demographics of Equatorial Guinea Population in Equatorial Guinea 114 115 116 Year Million1950 0 22000 0 62020 1 4The majority of the people of Equatorial Guinea are of Bantu origin 117 The largest ethnic group the Fang is indigenous to the mainland but substantial migration to Bioko Island since the 20th century means the Fang population exceeds that of the earlier Bubi inhabitants The Fang constitute 80 of the population 118 and comprise around 67 clans Those in the northern part of Rio Muni speak Fang Ntumu while those in the south speak Fang Okah the two dialects have differences but are mutually intelligible Dialects of Fang are also spoken in parts of neighboring Cameroon Bulu and Gabon These dialects while still intelligible are more distinct The Bubi who constitute 15 of the population are indigenous to Bioko Island The traditional demarcation line between Fang and Beach inland ethnic groups was the village of Niefang limit of the Fang east of Bata Coastal ethnic groups sometimes referred to as Ndowe or Playeros Beach People in Spanish Combes Bujebas Balengues and Bengas on the mainland and small islands and Fernandinos a Krio community on Bioko Island together comprise 5 of the population Europeans largely of Spanish or Portuguese descent some with partial African ancestry also live in the country but most ethnic Spaniards left after independence Equatorial Guinean children of Bubi descent A growing number of foreigners from neighboring Cameroon Nigeria and Gabon have immigrated to the country According to the Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations 2002 7 of Bioko islanders were Igbo an ethnic group from southeastern Nigeria 119 Equatorial Guinea received Asians and native Africans from other countries as workers on cocoa and coffee plantations Other black Africans came from Liberia Angola and Mozambique Most of the Asian population is Chinese with small numbers of Indians Equatorial Guinea has also been a destination for fortune seeking European immigrants from Britain France and Germany Israelis and Moroccans also live and work here Oil extraction since the 1990s has contributed to a doubling of the population in Malabo citation needed After independence thousands of Equatorial Guineans went to Spain Another 100 000 Equatorial Guineans went to Cameroon Gabon and Nigeria because of the dictatorship of Francisco Macias Nguema Some Equatorial Guinean communities are also found in Latin America the United States Portugal and France citation needed Languages Edit Floral inscription with the name of the country in Spanish in Malabo Main articles Equatoguinean Spanish and Academia Ecuatoguineana de la Lengua Espanola Since its independence in 1968 the main official language of Equatorial Guinea has been Spanish the local variant is Equatoguinean Spanish which acts as a lingua franca among its different ethnic groups In 1970 during Macias rule Spanish was replaced by Fang the language of its majority ethnic group to which Macias belonged That decision was reverted in 1979 after Macias fall Spanish remained as its lone official language until 1998 when French was added as its second one as it had previously joined the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa CEMAC whose founding members are French speaking nations two of them Cameroon and Gabon surrounding its continental region 120 3 Portuguese was adopted as its third official language in 2010 121 122 Spanish has been an official language since 1844 It is still the language of education and administration 67 6 of Equatorial Guineans can speak it especially those living in the capital Malabo 123 French was only made official in order to join the Francophonie and it is not locally spoken except in some border towns Aboriginal languages are recognised as integral parts of the national culture Constitutional Law No 1 1998 21 January Indigenous languages some of them creoles include Fang Bube Benga Ndowe Balengue Bujeba Bissio Gumu Igbo Pichinglis Fa d Ambo and the nearly extinct Baseke Most African ethnic groups speak Bantu languages 124 African languages of Equatorial Guinea and its environment Fa d Ambo a Portuguese creole has vigorous use in Annobon Province in Malabo the capital and among some speakers in Equatorial Guinea s mainland Many residents of Bioko can also speak Spanish particularly in the capital and the local trade language Pichinglis an English based creole Spanish is not spoken much in Annobon In government and education Spanish is used Noncreolized Portuguese is used as a liturgical language by local Catholics 125 The Annobonese ethnic community tried to gain membership in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries CPLP The government financed an Instituto Internacional da Lingua Portuguesa IILP sociolinguistic study in Annobon It documented strong links with the Portuguese creole populations in Sao Tome and Principe Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau 122 Due to historical and cultural ties in 2010 the legislature amended article four of the Constitution of Equatorial Guinea to establish Portuguese as an official language of the Republic This was an effort by the government to improve its communications trade and bilateral relations with Portuguese speaking countries 126 127 128 It also recognises long historical ties with Portugal and with Portuguese speaking peoples of Brazil Sao Tome and Principe and Cape Verde Some of the motivations for Equatorial Guinea s pursuit of membership in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries CPLP included access to several professional and academic exchange programmes and facilitated cross border circulation of citizens 123 The adoption of Portuguese as an official language was the primary requirement to apply for CPLP acceptance In addition the country was told it must adopt political reforms allowing effective democracy and respect for human rights 129 The national parliament discussed this law in October 2011 130 In February 2012 Equatorial Guinea s foreign minister signed an agreement with the IILP on the promotion of Portuguese in the country 131 132 In July 2012 the CPLP refused Equatorial Guinea full membership primarily because of its continued serious violations of human rights The government responded by legalising political parties declaring a moratorium on the death penalty and starting a dialog with all political factions 122 133 Additionally the IILP secured land from the government for the construction of Portuguese language cultural centres in Bata and Malabo 122 At its tenth summit in Dili in July 2014 Equatorial Guinea was admitted as a CPLP member Abolition of the death penalty and the promotion of Portuguese as an official language were preconditions of the approval 134 Religion Edit Religion in Equatorial GuineaReligion percentRoman Catholic 88 Other indigenous beliefs Bahaʼi 5 Protestant 5 Muslim 2 Santa Isabel Cathedral in Malabo The principal religion in Equatorial Guinea is Christianity the faith of 93 of the population Roman Catholics make up the majority 88 while a minority are Protestants 5 2 of the population follows Islam mainly Sunni The remaining 5 practise Animism Bahaʼi and other beliefs 135 and traditional animist beliefs are often mixed with Catholicism 136 Health Edit Main article Health in Equatorial Guinea Equatorial Guinea s innovative malaria programs in the early 21st century achieved success in reducing malaria infection disease and mortality 137 Their program consists of twice yearly indoor residual spraying IRS the introduction of artemisinin combination treatment ACTs the use of intermittent preventive treatment in pregnant women IPTp and the introduction of very high coverage with long lasting insecticide treated mosquito nets LLINs Their efforts resulted in a reduction in all cause under five mortality from 152 to 55 deaths per 1 000 live births down 64 a sharp drop that coincided with the launch of the program 138 In June 2014 four cases of polio were reported the country s first outbreak of the disease 139 Education Edit Further information Education in Equatorial Guinea Ministry of Education Science and Sports Ministerio de Educacion Ciencia y Deportes in Spanish Among sub Saharan African countries Equatorial Guinea has one of the highest literacy rates 140 According to The World Factbook Central Intelligence Agency as of 2015 95 3 of the population age 15 and over can read and write in Equatorial Guinea were respectively literate 140 Under Francisco Macias education was neglected and few children received any type of education Under President Obiang the illiteracy rate dropped from 73 to 13 3 and the number of primary school students rose from 65 000 in 1986 to more than 100 000 in 1994 Education is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 14 99 The Equatorial Guinea government has partnered with Hess Corporation and The Academy for Educational Development AED to establish a 20 million education program for primary school teachers to teach modern child development techniques 141 There are now 51 model schools whose active pedagogy will be a national reform needs update In recent years when with change in the economic and political climate and government social agendas several cultural dispersion and literacy organizations have been founded chiefly with the financial support of the Spanish government The country has one university the Universidad Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial UNGE with a campus in Malabo and a Faculty of Medicine located in Bata on the mainland In 2009 the university produced the first 110 national doctors The Bata Medical School is supported principally by the government of Cuba and staffed by Cuban medical educators and physicians 142 Culture EditMain article Culture of Equatorial Guinea The port of Malabo In June 1984 the First Hispanic African Cultural Congress was convened to explore the cultural identity of Equatorial Guinea The congress constituted the center of integration and the marriage of the Hispanic culture with African cultures 99 Tourism Edit Hotel in Sipopo Equatorial Guinea currently has no UNESCO World Heritage Site or tentative sites for the World Heritage List 143 The country also has no documented heritage listed in the Memory of the World Programme of UNESCO nor any intangible cultural heritage listed in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List 144 145 Tourist attractions are the colonial quarter in Malabo the southern part of the island Bioko where you can hike to the Iladyi cascades and to remote beaches to watch nesting turtles Bata with its shoreline Paseo Maritimo and the tower of liberty Mongomo with its basilica the second largest Catholic church in Africa and the new planned and built capital Ciudad de la Paz Media and communications Edit Main articles Media in Equatorial Guinea and Telecommunications in Equatorial Guinea Edition of the television magazine Malabeando at the Cultural Centre of Spain in Malabo The principal means of communication within Equatorial Guinea are 3 state operated FM radio stations BBC World Service Radio France Internationale and Gabon based Africa No 1 broadcast on FM in Malabo There is also an independent radio option called Radio Macuto the voice of the voiceless Radio Macuto is a web based radio and news source known for publishing news that call out Obiang s regime and call for the mobilisation of the ecuatoguinean community to exercise freedom of speech and engage in politics There are also five shortwave radio stations Television Nacional the television network is state operated 3 146 The international TV programme RTVGE is available via satellites in Africa Europa and the Americas and worldwide via Internet 147 There are two newspapers and two magazines Equatorial Guinea ranks at position 161 out of 179 countries in the 2012 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index The watchdog says the national broadcaster obeys the orders of the information ministry Most of the media companies practice self censorship and are banned by law from criticising public figures The state owned media and the main private radio station are under the directorship of the president s son Teodor Obiang Landline telephone penetration is low with only two lines available for every 100 persons 3 There is one GSM mobile telephone operator with coverage of Malabo Bata and several mainland cities 148 149 As of 2009 update approximately 40 of the population subscribed to mobile telephone services 3 The only telephone provider in Equatorial Guinea is Orange There were more than 42 000 internet users by December 2011 citation needed Music Edit Further information Music of Equatorial Guinea There is little popular music coming out of Equatorial Guinea Pan African styles like soukous and makossa are popular as are reggae and rock and roll Acoustic guitar bands based on a Spanish model are the country s best known indigenous popular tradition Cinema Edit In 2014 the South African Dutch Equatorial Guinean drama film Where the Road Runs Out was shot in the country There is also the documentary The Writer From a Country Without Bookstores 150 that has still to be internationally premiered It focuses on one of Equatorial Guinea s most translated writers Juan Tomas Avila Laurel It is the first feature film openly critical of Obiang s regime Sports Edit See also Category Sport in Equatorial Guinea Estadio de Bata in Bata Equatorial Guinea was chosen to co host the 2012 African Cup of Nations in partnership with Gabon and hosted the 2015 edition The country was also chosen to host the 2008 Women s African Football Championship which they won The women s national team qualified for the 2011 World Cup in Germany In June 2016 Equatorial Guinea was chosen to host the 12th African Games in 2019 Equatorial Guinea is famous for the swimmers Eric Moussambani nicknamed Eric the Eel 151 and Paula Barila Bolopa Paula the Crawler who attended the 2000 Summer Olympics 152 Basketball has been increasing in popularity 153 See also Edit Africa portalOutline of Equatorial GuineaNotes Edit Spanish giˈnea ekwatoˈɾjal listen Local pronunciation Spanish Republica de Guinea Ecuatorial Spanish pronunciation reˈpublika de ɣiˈnea ekwatoˈɾjal listen French Republique de Guinee equatoriale ʁepyblik d e ɡine ekwatoˈʁjal Portuguese Republica da Guine Equatorial Portuguese pronunciation ʁɛˈpublikɐ dɐ ɣiˈnɛ ˌekwɐtuɾiˈal References Edit History language and culture in Equatorial Guinea Equatorial Guinea Adds Portuguese as the Country s Third Official Language 14 October 2011 Retrieved 26 September 2022 a b c d e f Equatorial Guinea Cia World Factbook Religions in Equatorial Guinea PEW GRF Global Religious Futures Section 3 Freedom to Participate in the Political Process Equatorial Guinea 2020 Human Rights Report PDF U S Embassy in Equatorial Guinea Report 2020 p 15 Retrieved 8 August 2021 Democracy Index 2020 Economist Intelligence Unit Retrieved 17 December 2021 Equatorial Guinea The World Factbook 2023 ed Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 24 September 2022 GDP per capita PPP current international Equatorial Guinea data worldbank org The World Bank Retrieved 26 April 2022 GDP per capita current US Equatorial Guinea data worldbank org The World Bank Retrieved 26 April 2022 Human Development Report 2021 2022 PDF United Nations Development Programme 8 September 2022 Archived PDF from the original on 9 October 2022 Retrieved 16 October 2022 Equatorial Guinea Population Appel Hannah 13 December 2019 The Licit Life of Capitalism Duke University Press doi 10 1515 9781478004578 ISBN 978 1 4780 0457 8 S2CID 242248625 GDP per capita PPP Country Comparison Indexmundi com Retrieved on 5 May 2013 GDP per capita PPP Archived 24 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine The World Factbook Central Intelligence Agency 2019 Human Development Index Ranking Human Development Reports hdr undp org Archived from the original on 23 May 2020 Retrieved 29 March 2020 Mortality rate under 5 per 1 000 live births Data data worldbank org a b Equatorial Guinea profile BBC 21 March 2014 Archived from the original on 21 September 2014 Retrieved 23 September 2020 Guine Equatorial oficializa portugues Portugal DN 19 August 2011 Archived from the original on 19 August 2011 Retrieved 11 November 2020 via web archive org Guinea Ecuatorial se convierte en el valedor del espanol en Africa La Vanguardia in Spanish 16 March 2016 Retrieved 11 November 2020 Gloria Nistal Rosique El caso del espanol en Guinea ecuatorial Instituto Cervantes PDF Worst of the Worst 2010 The World s Most Repressive Societies freedomhouse org Equatorial Guinea Reporters Without Borders Archived 15 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine En rsf org Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Equatorial Guinea Trafficking in Persons Report 2020 U S Department of State 16 June 2020 This source is in the public domain Bostoen K Clist B Doumenge C Grollemund R Hombert J M Koni Muluwa J amp Maley J 2015 Middle to Late Holocene Paleoclimatic Change and the Early Bantu Expansion in the Rain Forests of Western Central Africa Current Anthropology 56 3 pp 354 384 Clist B 1990 Des derniers chasseurs aux premiers metallurgistes sedentarisation et debuts de la metallurgie du fer Cameroun Gabon Guinee Equatoriale In Lanfranchi R amp Schwartz D eds Paysages quaternaires de l Afrique Centrale Atlantique Paris ORSTOM Collection didactiques 458 478 Clist B 1998 Nouvelles donnees archeologiques sur l histoire ancienne de la Guinee Equatoriale L Anthropologie 102 2 213 217 Sanchez Elipe Lorente M 2015 Las comunidades de la eda del hierro en Africa Centro Occidental cultura material e identidad Tesi Doctoral Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 5 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 6 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 a b Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 6 7 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Fernando Po Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911 Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 7 8 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 a b Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 13 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 a b Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 9 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 8 9 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Clarence Smith William Gervase 2 September 2003 Cocoa and Chocolate 1765 1914 Routledge p 104 ISBN 978 1 134 60778 5 Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 18 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 a b c Clarence Smith William Gervase 1986 Spanish Equatorial Guinea 1898 1940 in The Cambridge History of Africa From 1905 to 1940 Ed J D Fage A D Roberts amp Roland Anthony Oliver Cambridge Cambridge University Press Archived 20 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine a b Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 19 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Martino Enrique 2012 Clandestine Recruitment Networks in the Bight of Biafra Fernando Po s Answer to the Labour Question 1926 1945 International Review of Social History 57 39 72 doi 10 1017 s0020859012000417 Roberts A D ed 1986 The Cambridge History of Africa Volume 7 Cambridge University Press p 540 Castillo Rodriguez S 2012 La ultima selva de Espana Antropofagos misioneros y guardias civiles Cronica de la conquista de los Fang de la Guinea Espanola 1914 1930 Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 13 3 315 doi 10 1080 14636204 2013 790703 S2CID 145077430 Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 20 21 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Crowder Michael ed 1984 The Cambridge History of Africa Volume 8 from C 1940 to C 1975 Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521224098 Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 59 60 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 51 52 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 55 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Congratulations marking Independence Day continue to arrive Press release Equatorial Guinea Press and Information Office 10 September 2020 Retrieved 10 September 2020 permanent dead link Campos Alicia 2003 The decolonization of Equatorial Guinea the relevance of the international factor Journal of African History 44 1 95 116 doi 10 1017 s0021853702008319 hdl 10486 690991 S2CID 143108720 Archived from the original on 20 August 2016 Retrieved 3 February 2014 Fegley Randall 1989 Equatorial Guinea An African Tragedy p 60 Peter Lang New York ISBN 0820409774 Equatorial Guinea Mass Atrocity Endings Tufts University 7 August 2015 Equatorial Guinea EG Justice www egjustice org Archived from the original on 17 April 2019 Retrieved 17 April 2019 Equatorial Guinea s President Said to Be Retired Not Ousted The Washington Post Retrieved 17 December 2019 a b Aworawo David Decisive Thaw The Changing Pattern of Relations between Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea 1980 2005 PDF Journal of International and Global Studies 1 2 103 Archived from the original PDF on 24 January 2013 Sengupta Kim 11 May 2007 Coup plotter faces life in Africa s most notorious jail London News independent co uk Archived from the original on 29 December 2007 Retrieved 3 May 2010 Daniels Anthony 29 August 2004 If you think this one s bad you should have seen his uncle London The Telegraph Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 Retrieved 22 May 2014 The Five Worst Leaders In Africa Forbes 9 February 2012 DC Meeting Set with President Obiang as Corruption Details Emerge Global Witness 15 June 2012 Forbes 5 March 2006 Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo President Equatorial Guinea Empresas portuguesas planeiam nova capital da Guine Equatorial africa21digital com 5 November 2011 Atelier luso desenha futura capital da Guine Equatorial Archived 15 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine Boasnoticias pt 5 November 2011 Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Arquitetos portugueses projetam nova capital para Guine Equatorial Archived 10 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine Piniweb com br Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Atelie portugues desenha futura capital da Guine Equatorial Archived 22 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine Greensavers pt 14 December 2011 Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Simon Allison 11 July 2014 Equatorial Guinea One man s fight against dictatorship The Guardian Retrieved 9 May 2017 Bariyo Nicholas 8 March 2021 Equatorial Guinea Takes Stock After Giant Explosions The Wall Street Journal ISSN 0099 9660 Retrieved 9 March 2021 Obiang obtiene el 99 7 de los votos en las elecciones de Guinea Ecuatorial entre denuncias de fraude masivo El Pais 21 11 2022 Primeros resultados dan a Obiang casi el 100 de votos en Guinea Ecuatorial Heraldo 21 11 2022 BBC News Equatorial Guinea country profile Overview Bbc co uk 11 December 2012 Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Vines Alex 9 July 2009 Well Oiled Human Rights Watch Retrieved 21 January 2011 Shaxson Nicholas 17 March 2004 Profile Equatorial Guinea s great survivor BBC News Thatcher faces 15 years in prison The Sydney Morning Herald 27 August 2004 MacKay Neil 29 August 2004 The US knew Spain knew Britain knew Whose coup was it Sunday Herald Archived from the original on 14 May 2011 Equatorial Guinea A trial with too many flaws Amnesty International 7 June 2005 Archived from the original on 12 February 2006 Presidential Decree Republicofequatorialguinea net Archived from the original on 26 April 2010 Retrieved 3 May 2010 Heather Layman LPA 11 April 2006 USAID and the Republic of Equatorial Guinea Agree to Unique Partnership for Development Usaid gov Archived from the original on 5 June 2011 Retrieved 3 May 2010 Organizational Reform amp Institutional Capacity Building MPRI Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Equatorial Guinea Amnesty International Amnesty org Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Archived 1 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine Equatorial Guinea Human Rights Watch Hrw org Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Corruption Perception Index 2020 Transparency International 2020 Retrieved 15 September 2021 Equatorial Guinea Ignorance worth fistfuls of dollars Freedom House 13 June 2012 Archived from the original on 23 June 2012 Retrieved 19 January 2017 Factoria Audiovisual S R L Declaracion de la Union Africana sobre la supervision de los comicios electorales Pagina Oficial de la Oficina de Informacion y Prensa de Guinea Ecuatorial Guineaecuatorialpress com Retrieved 3 May 2010 UPDATE 1 Tang renamed as Equatorial Guinea PM News by Country Reuters Af reuters com 12 January 2010 Archived from the original on 23 March 2010 Retrieved 3 May 2010 Equatorial Guinea country profile BBC News 8 May 2018 Ignacio Milam Tang new Vice President of the Nation guineaecuatorialpress com 22 May 2012 Interview with President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea CNN 5 October 2012 Convocatorial de Manifestacion 25 de Junio 2013 PDF cpds gq org Archived from the original PDF on 21 February 2014 Opposition protest dispersed by security forces country eiu com Economist Intelligence Unit 26 June 2013 Retrieved 8 December 2022 Freedom House Equatorial Guinea Freedom in the World 2022 Freedom House Retrieved 2 April 2022 a b c Equatorial Guinea one dictatorship to the next November 2021 Nations Encyclopedia Nations Encyclopedia 10 April 2011 Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Dinerstein Eric Olson David Joshi Anup Vynne Carly Burgess Neil D Wikramanayake Eric Hahn Nathan Palminteri Suzanne Hedao Prashant Noss Reed Hansen Matt Locke Harvey Ellis Erle C Jones Benjamin Barber Charles Victor Hayes Randy Kormos Cyril Martin Vance Crist Eileen Sechrest Wes Price Lori Baillie Jonathan E M Weeden Don Suckling Kieran Davis Crystal Sizer Nigel Moore Rebecca Thau David Birch Tanya Potapov Peter Turubanova Svetlana Tyukavina Alexandra de Souza Nadia Pintea Lilian Brito Jose C Llewellyn Othman A Miller Anthony G Patzelt Annette Ghazanfar Shahina A Timberlake Jonathan Kloser Heinz Shennan Farpon Yara Kindt Roeland Lilleso Jens Peter Barnekow van Breugel Paulo Graudal Lars Voge Maianna Al Shammari Khalaf F Saleem Muhammad 2017 An Ecoregion Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm BioScience 67 6 534 545 doi 10 1093 biosci bix014 ISSN 0006 3568 PMC 5451287 PMID 28608869 Grantham H S Duncan A Evans T D Jones K R Beyer H L Schuster R Walston J Ray J C Robinson J G Callow M Clements T Costa H M DeGemmis A Elsen P R Ervin J Franco P Goldman E Goetz S Hansen A Hofsvang E Jantz P Jupiter S Kang A Langhammer P Laurance W F Lieberman S Linkie M Malhi Y Maxwell S Mendez M Mittermeier R Murray N J Possingham H Radachowsky J Saatchi S Samper C Silverman J Shapiro A Strassburg B Stevens T Stokes E Taylor R Tear T Tizard R Venter O Visconti P Wang S Watson J E M 2020 Anthropogenic modification of forests means only 40 of remaining forests have high ecosystem integrity Supplementary Material Nature Communications 11 1 5978 Bibcode 2020NatCo 11 5978G doi 10 1038 s41467 020 19493 3 ISSN 2041 1723 PMC 7723057 PMID 33293507 Equatorial Guinea Plant and animal life Encyclopedia Britannica a b Law Gwillim 22 March 2016 Provinces of Equatorial Guinea Statoids Retrieved 25 September 2017 El Gobierno inicia sus actividades en Djibloho in Spanish PDGE 7 February 2017 Retrieved 25 September 2017 La Presidencia de la Republica sanciona dos nuevas leyes in Spanish Equatorial Guinea Press and Information Office 23 June 2017 Archived from the original on 25 June 2017 Retrieved 25 September 2017 Equatorial Guinea government moves to new city in rainforest BBC News 8 February 2017 Retrieved 25 September 2017 Law Gwillim 22 April 2016 Districts of Equatorial Guinea Statoids Retrieved 25 September 2017 a b c Equatorial Guinea equatorialguinea org Archived from the original on 3 October 1999 Retrieved 3 May 2010 Justin Blum 7 September 2004 U S Oil Firms Entwined in Equatorial Guinea Deals Washington Post Retrieved 9 July 2008 Equatorial Guinea grants two year extensions on oil amp gas exploration Reuters 4 May 2020 Chevron Equatorial Guinea sign production sharing agreement for offshore block Reuters 10 December 2021 Overview World Bank Retrieved 16 October 2021 Inner City Press Finance Watch Follow the Money Watchdog the Regulators Inner City Press Retrieved 3 May 2010 Glenday Craig 2013 Guinness Book of Records 2014 p 1 ISBN 978 1 908843 15 9 OHADA com The business law portal in Africa Retrieved 22 March 2009 Equatorial Guinea United States Department of State Retrieved 16 October 2021 Equatorial Guinea EITI Archived 13 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine Eitransparency org 27 September 2007 Retrieved on 5 May 2013 50 Things You Didn t Know About Africa PDF World Bank Archived from the original PDF on 25 July 2013 Retrieved 7 May 2012 Equatorial Guinea Economic Outlook African Development Bank 29 March 2019 Retrieved 16 October 2021 El franquismo resiste en algun lugar de Africa PlayGround Archived from the original on 27 November 2019 Retrieved 24 November 2021 List of banned EU air carriers Archived 4 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine Ec europa eu Retrieved on 5 May 2013 source World Population Prospects 2022 population un org United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division Retrieved 17 July 2022 World Population Prospects 2022 Demographic indicators by region subregion and country annually for 1950 2100 XSLX population un org Total Population as of 1 July thousands United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division Retrieved 17 July 2022 UNData app Ecuatorial Guinea population 2020 UN Data Archived from the original on 11 August 2021 Retrieved 23 September 2021 Vines Alex 2009 Well Oiled Oil and Human Rights in Equatorial Guinea Human Rights Watch p 9 ISBN 978 1 56432 516 7 Retrieved 19 December 2012 Equatorial Guinea s God BBC 26 July 2003 Retrieved 26 May 2011 Minahan James 2002 Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations A C Greenwood Publishing Group p 330 ISBN 0 313 32109 4 5 Guinea Ecuatorial Centro Virtual Cervantes in Spanish Retrieved 25 January 2022 Guine Equatorial in Portuguese CPLP Retrieved 28 November 2014 a b c d Formacao de professores e programas televisivos introduzem portugues na Guine Equatorial Teacher formation and television programs introduce Portuguese in Equatorial Guinea in Portuguese Sol 5 February 2014 a b Obiang convierte al portugues en tercer idioma oficial para entrar en la Comunidad lusofona de Naciones Terra 13 July 2007 Oficina de Informacion y Prensa de Guinea Ecuatorial Ministerio de Informacion Cultura y Turismo Guineaecuatorialpress com Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Fa d Ambu Ethnologue Retrieved 15 November 2010 Equatorial Guinea Adds Portuguese as the Country s Third Official Language PRNewsWire 14 October 2011 Retrieved 15 November 2010 El portugues sera el tercer idioma oficial de la Republica de Guinea Ecuatorial in Spanish Gobierno de la Republica de Guinea Ecuatoria Archived from the original on 3 September 2015 Retrieved 15 November 2010 Proyecto de Ley Constitucional PDF Gobierno de la Republica de Guinea Ecuatorial 14 October 2011 Archived from the original PDF on 3 January 2012 Retrieved 15 November 2010 Portuguese will be the third official language of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea Guinea Ecuatorial Press 20 July 2010 Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Maria Jesus Nsang Nguema Prensa Presidencial 15 October 2011 S E Obiang Nguema Mbasogo clausura el Segundo Periodo Ordinario de Sesiones del pleno de la Camara de Representantes del Pueblo President Obiang closes second session period of parliament in Spanish Oficina de Informacion y Prensa de Guinea Ecuatorial D G Base Internet Retrieved 27 March 2012 Assinado termo de cooperacao entre IILP e Guine Equatorial Protocol signed on cooperation between IILP and Guinea Equatorial in Portuguese Instituto Internacional de Lingua Portuguesa 7 February 2012 Retrieved 27 March 2012 Protocolo de Cooperacao entre a Guine Equatorial e o IILP Protocol on cooperation between IILP and Guinea Equatorial in Portuguese CPLP 7 February 2012 Retrieved 27 March 2012 This note contains a link to the text of the protocol in PDF format CPLP vai ajudar Guine Equatorial a assimilar valores in Portuguese Expresso 20 September 2014 Retrieved 24 November 2012 permanent dead link Nota informativa Missao da CPLP a Guine Equatorial in Portuguese CPLP 3 May 2011 Retrieved 27 March 2012 International Religious Freedom Report for 2017 Archived from the original on 26 February 2020 Retrieved 22 May 2019 Matt Phillips Andrew David Bainbridge James Bewer Tim Bindloss Joe Carillet Jean Bernard Clammer Paul Cornwell Jane Crossan Rob et al Authors September 2007 The Africa Book A Journey Through Every Country in the Continent Coordinated by Matt Phillips Footscray Australia Lonely Planet p 116 ISBN 978 1 74104 602 1 OCLC 144596621 Steketee R W 2009 Good news in malaria control Now what The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 80 6 879 880 doi 10 4269 ajtmh 2009 80 879 PMID 19478241 Marked Increase in Child Survival after Four Years of Intensive Malaria Control Ajtmh org Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Detection of poliovirus in Sao Paulo airport sewage WHO Brazil News Net Archived from the original on 10 July 2014 Retrieved 23 June 2014 a b Literacy The World Factbook www cia gov HESS and AED Partner to Improve Education in Equatorial Guinea AED org Equatorial Guinea Minister Seeks Strong Ties With U S Archived 11 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine Voanews com 4 April 2010 Retrieved on 5 May 2013 Tentative Lists unesco org Equatorial Guinea intangible heritage Culture Sector UNESCO Retrieved on 19 January 2017 Memory of the World United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization Unesco org Retrieved on 19 January 2017 Country Profile Equatorial Guinea Media BBC News 26 January 2008 TVGE Internacional LyngSat Retrieved 28 March 2012 GSMWorld Providers Equatorial Guinea GSM World 2008 Archived from the original on 14 April 2008 GSMWorld GETESA Coverage Map GSM World 2008 Archived from the original on 8 January 2009 The Writer From a Country Without Bookstores elescritordeunpais com O Mahony Jennifer 27 July 2012 London 2012 Olympics how Eric the Eel Moussambani inspired a generation in swimming pool at Sydney Games The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on 20 April 2005 Retrieved 18 December 2012 Paula the Crawler sets record BBC News 22 September 2000 Retrieved 18 December 2012 Scafidi Oscar 1 November 2015 Equatorial Guinea Bradt Travel Guides Ltd p 126 ISBN 978 1 78477 136 2 Retrieved 10 September 2021 Sources Edit This article incorporates public domain material from World Factbook CIA Max Liniger Goumaz Small Is Not Always Beautiful The Story of Equatorial Guinea French 1986 translated 1989 ISBN 0 389 20861 2 Robert Klitgaard 1990 Tropical Gangsters New York Basic Books World Bank economist tries to assist pre oil Equatorial Guinea ISBN 0 465 08760 4 D L Claret Cien anos de evangelizacion en Guinea Ecuatorial 1883 1983 One Hundred Years of Evangelism in Equatorial Guinea 1983 Barcelona Claretian Missionaries Adam Roberts The Wonga Coup Guns Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil Rich Corner of Africa 2006 PublicAffairs ISBN 1 58648 371 4 External links EditEquatorial Guinea at Wikipedia s sister projects Definitions from Wiktionary Media from Commons News from Wikinews Texts from Wikisource Travel information from Wikivoyage Data from Wikidata Equatorial Guinea at Curlie Wikimedia Atlas of Equatorial Guinea Official Government of Equatorial Guinea website Guinea in Figures Official Web Page of the Government of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea Archived 3 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine Country Profile from BBC News Equatorial Guinea The World Factbook Central Intelligence Agency Equatorial Guinea from UCB Libraries GovPubs 1 30 N 10 00 E 1 500 N 10 000 E 1 500 10 000 Coordinates 1 30 N 10 00 E 1 500 N 10 000 E 1 500 10 000 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w 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