📰 Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea,[14] officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea,[15] is a country on the west coast of Central Africa and the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa.1 It has an area of 28000 km2.2 Formerly the colony of Spanish Guinea, its post-independence name refers to its location both near the Equator and in the African region of Guinea. as of 2025, the country has a population of 1,853,559,[10] over 85% of whom are members of the Fang people, the country's dominant ethnic group.3 The Bubi people, indigenous to Bioko Island, are the second largest group at approximately 6.5% of the population.4 The capital, since January 2026, is Ciudad de la Paz corpus, and Bata is the largest city.[16]5

Equatorial Guinea consists of two parts.6 The mainland region, Río Muni, is bordered by Cameroon corpus to the north and Gabon corpus to the south and east.7 It has the majority of the population.8 Río Muni's small offshore islands include Corisco, Elobey Grande, and Elobey Chico.9 The insular region consists of the islands of Bioko (formerly Fernando Po) in the Gulf of Guinea and Annobón.10 Bioko Island is the northernmost part of Equatorial Guinea and is the site of Malabo.11 The Portuguese-speaking island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe corpus is located between Bioko and Annobón.12 The Equator runs through Equatorial Guinea's territorial waters, about 1.4° north of Annobón.13

Pygmies are the first confirmed inhabitants to settle in the area of present-day Equatorial Guinea, followed by a migration of Bantu-speaking groups in the 6th century BC.14 Portuguese explorer Fernando Pó explored the area in 1472.15 Via the 1778 Treaty of El Pardo, Portugal ceded territories in the Bight of Biafra to Spain; the territory was declared Spanish Guinea during the Scramble for Africa.16 Nearly 200 years later, it gained independence in 1968 under the bloody dictatorship of President Francisco Macías Nguema.17 He declared himself president for life in 1972 but was overthrown in a coup in 1979 by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has served as the country's president since.18 Obiang's regime has been widely characterized as a dictatorship by foreign observers.19

Since the mid-1990s, Equatorial Guinea has become one of Sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producers.[17]20 It has subsequently become one of the richest countries per capita in Africa;[18] this wealth is extremely unevenly distributed, with few people benefiting from the oil riches.21 However, the country has the second-highest Human Development Index[13] among Sub-Saharan countries (rank 133rd), and 7.7% of children dying before the age of five in 2021, a continuous reduction from 17.9% in 1990.22

Since Equatorial Guinea is a former Spanish colony, Spanish is the main official language.23 French and (as of 2010) Portuguese have also been made official.[19]24 Apart from the Spanish provinces in Africa (Canary Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla), Equatorial Guinea is one of the two countries (the other being the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic corpus) and the only sovereign country in Africa where Spanish is an official language.[20]25 Spain supports education and research for citizens, including cooperation on teachers training and postgraduate/doctoral education.26 The education was highly influenced by the Spanish system, and Equatorial Guinea has had one of the highest literacy rates among Sub-Saharan African countries.27

Since the United States oil companies are the main operators of the oil industry, they are the main supporters of revenue.28 Guinea's government is authoritarian and sultanist[21] 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.[22]29 Reporters Without Borders ranks Obiang among its "predators" of press freedom.[23]30 Human trafficking in the country 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.[24]31 The country is a member of the United Nations, African Union, Francophonie, OPEC, and the CPLP.32

History

Main article: History of Equatorial Guinea

Pygmies likely once lived in the continental region but are today found only in isolated pockets in southern Río Muni.33 Bantu migrations likely started around 2,000 BC from between south-east Nigeria and north-west Cameroon (the Grassfields).[25]34 They must have settled continental Equatorial Guinea around 500 BC at the latest.[26][27]35 The earliest settlements on Bioko are dated to AD 530.[28]36 The Annobón population, originally native to Angola corpus, was introduced by the Portuguese via São Tomé island.[29]37

First European contact and Portuguese rule (1472–1778)

Portuguese explorer Fernando Pó, seeking a path to India, is credited as being the first European to see the island of Bioko in 1472.38 He called it Formosa ("Beautiful"), but it quickly took on the name of its European discoverer.39 The island of Fernando Pó and Annobón were colonized by Portugal in 1474.40 The first factories were established on the islands around 1500 as the Portuguese recognized the positives of the islands including volcanic soil and disease-resistant highlands.41 Despite natural advantages, initial Portuguese efforts in 1507 to establish a sugarcane plantation and town on Fernando Pó failed due to Bubi hostility and fever.[30]42

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

In 1778, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of El Pardo.43 The treaty ceded Bioko and adjacent islets along with commercial rights to the Bight of Biafra between the Niger and Ogooué rivers to Spain in exchange for large areas of modern-day western Brazil being ceded to Portugal.44 Brigadier Felipe José, Count of Arjelejos of the Spanish Navy formally took possession of Bioko from Portugal on 21 October 1778.45 While sailing to Annobón to take possession of it, Arjelejos died from a tropical disease contracted on Bioko, and his fever-ridden crew mutinied.46 The crew, after having lost over 80% of their men to sickness, instead landed on São Tomé where they were imprisoned by Portuguese colonial authorities.[31]47

As a result of this disaster, Spain was subsequently hesitant to invest heavily in its new possession.48 However, despite such a setback, Spanish merchants began to use the island as a base for engaging in the Atlantic slave trade.49 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 corpus.[32]50 From 1827 to 1843 the Spanish leased a base in Bioko to the United Kingdom, which the British had sought as part of their efforts to suppress the slave trade.[33]51 In 1827 Britain unilaterally moved the headquarters of the Mixed Commission for the Suppression of Slave Traffic to Fernando Pó, before moving it back to Sierra Leone corpus under an agreement with Spain in 1843.52 Spain's decision to abolish its involvement in the slave trade under British pressure in 1817 damaged the colony's perceived value to the Spanish and so leasing naval bases was an effective revenue earner from an otherwise unprofitable possession.[32]53 Plans by Spain to sell its African colony to Britain were cancelled in 1841 due to opposition from Spanish politicians and the public.[34]54

Late 19th century (1844–1900)

In 1844, the British returned the island to Spanish control and the area became known as the "Territorios Españoles del Golfo de Guinea".55 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.56 Despite this, plantations continued to be established by private citizens through the second half of the 19th century.[35]57

The plantations of Fernando Pó were mostly run by a black Creole elite, later known as Fernandinos.58 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.59 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.[36]60 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.[37]61

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.62 Henry Morton Stanley had labelled Fernando Pó "a jewel which Spain did not polish" for refusing to enact such a policy.63 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.[35]64

There was also a trickle of immigration from the neighbouring Portuguese islands, escaped slaves, and prospective planters.65 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.66 The Sierra Leoneans were particularly well placed as planters while labour recruitment on the Windward coast corpus continued.67 The Fernandinos became traders and middlemen between the natives and Europeans.[36]68 A freed slave from the West Indies by way of Sierra Leone corpus named William Pratt established the cocoa crop on Fernando Pó.[38]69

Early 20th century (1900–1945)

Main article: Spanish Guinea

Spain had not occupied the large area in the Bight of Biafra to which it had right by treaty, and the French had expanded their occupation at the expense of the territory claimed by Spain.70 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.71 Minimal government backing for mainland annexation came as a result of public opinion and a need for labour on Fernando Pó.[39]72

The eventual treaty of Paris in 1900 left Spain with the continental enclave of Río Muni, only 26,000 km out of the 300,000km stretching east to the Ubangi river which the Spaniards had initially claimed.[40]73 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.[41]74 Iradier himself died in despair in 1911; decades later, the port of Cogo was renamed Puerto Iradier in his honour.75

Land regulations issued in 1904–1905 favoured Spaniards, and most of the later big planters arrived from Spain after that.76 An agreement was made with Liberia in 1914 to import cheap labour.[42]77 Due to malpractice however, the Liberian government eventually ended the treaty after 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.[43]78