Map

Leader

Joseph Kabila became president when his father Laurent was assassinated in 2001. He was elected in 2006, and secured another term in controversial elections in 2011.

Mr Kabila has enjoyed the clear support of western governments, regional allies such as South Africa and Angola, and mining groups that have signed multi-million dollar deals under his rule.

Travel

Visa & travel advice

Best period

The rainy season, which lasts from April to November, makes the roads outside of Kinshasa impossible to travel on, although we don’t recommend travel in this part of the country in any case. The majority of Congolese are Catholic, and their festivals reflect that situation.

 Safety

Concerned about your safety as you plan travel to Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)? We at Africa.com, together with our friends, family and colleagues, travel extensively throughout the continent. Here are the resources we consult when thinking of our safety in DRC:

• UK Government DRC Travel Advice Guidance

Africa.com comment: Very timely and frequently updated. Perspective assumes that you ARE going to travel to DRC, and seeks to give you good guidance so that you understand the risks and are well informed.

• Mo Ibrahim Personal Safety & Rule of Law Score for DRC

Africa.com comment: An annual ranking of the 54 African countries based on their relative personal security as determined by a highly qualified staff of an African foundation, funded by a successful African philanthropist. See where DRC ranks relative to the other 54 nations in Africa.

• U.S. State Department Travel Advisory on DRC

Africa.com comment: Can sometimes be considered as overly conservative and discourage travel altogether to destinations that many reasonable people find acceptably secure. On the other hand, they have the resources of the CIA to inform them, so they know things that the rest of us don’t know. See what they have to say about DRC.

History

The region that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo was first settled about 80,000 years ago. Bantu migration arrived in the region from Nigeria in the 7th century AD. The Kingdom of Kongo remained present in the region between the 14th and the early 19th centuries. Belgian colonization began when King Leopold II founded the Congo Free State, a corporate state run solely by King Leopold. Reports of widespread murder and torture in the rubber plantations led the Belgian government to seize the Congo from Leopold II and establish the Belgian Congo. Under Belgian rule, the colony was run with the presence of numerous Christian organizations that wanted to Westernize the Congolese people.

Arts & Culture

• Music :

Music of the Democratic Republic of the Congo varies in its different forms. Outside of Africa, most music from the Democratic Republic of Congo is called Soukous, which most accurately refers instead to a dance popular in the late 1960s. The term rumba or rock-rumba is also used generically to refer to Congolese music, though neither is precise nor accurately descriptive.

People from the Congo have no single term for their own music, per se, although muziki na biso ("our music") was used until the late 1970s, and now the most common name is ndule, which simply means music in the Lingala language; most songs from the Democratic Republic of the Congo are sung in Lingala.

• Film industry :

In the years following independence, the nascent Congolese film industry was held up by many years of war. However, the first Congolese feature film (La Vie est Belle by the celebrated director Mwezé Ngangura) was released in 1987. In recent years, Congolese cinema has reached a wider audience, though the growth of the industry is restricted by the small profits which directors can make (owing to pirating) and rarity of credit.

• Famous monuments :

Dimba Cave

Boyoma falls

Map

Leader

Mr Obiang Nguema is Africa's longest serving leader and has been in power for three decades.

In 1979 he seized power from President Francisco Macias Nguema, who was the leader at independence and whose rule prompted a mass exodus and thousands of deaths. The former leader was tried and executed.

Travel

Visa & travel advice

Visa application guidelines General requirements Visa application forms must be completed in full accordance with the data contained in travel documents submitted: personal details, date, and signature of the applicant. One recent colour photo must be attached. In the case…

In order to apply for a visa, please download and complete the application form. Please ensure that you have read the visa application guidelines in full before you apply. Visa applications (excluding express visas) are £100. Express visa applications are £180.…

• Best period

The weather is tropical, with heavy rainfall for most of the year. Flash floods can make travel difficult in the city

• Safety

Crime levels in Equatorial Guinea are relatively low for the region.

History

The mainland was originally inhabited by Pygmies. The Fang and Bubi migrated there in the 17th century and to the main island of Fernando Po (now called Bioko) in the 19th century. In the 18th century, the Portuguese ceded land to the Spanish that included Equatorial Guinea. From 1827 to 1844, Britain administered Fernando Po, but it was then reclaimed by Spain. Río Muni, the mainland, was not occupied by the Spanish until 1926. Spanish Guinea, as it was then called, gained independence from Spain on Oct. 12, 1968. It is Africa's only Spanish-speaking country.

Arts & Culture

• Music

The national anthem of Equatorial Guinea was written by Atanasio Ndongo Miyone, and adopted in 1968, when the country gained independence from Spain [2]. Equatorial Guinea was carved out of three former Spanish colonies: Rio Muni, a strip of land between Cameroon and Gabon, Bioko, an island near Cameroon, and Annobón, an island in the Atlantic Ocean far from the mainland. The largest ethnic group are the Fang (85.7% (1994 census) of a total 704,001 (July 2013 est.)), with 6.5% Bubi and smaller populations of Mdowe (3.6%), Annobónese (1.6%) and Bujeba (1.1%),[1] including smaller groups such as the Ndowe, the Bisio and the Combe.

The Fang are known for their mvet, a cross between a zither and a harp. The mvet can have up to fifteen strings. The semi-spherical part of this instrument is made of bamboo and the strings are attached to the center by fibers. Music for the mvet is written in a form of musical notation that can only be learned by initiates of the bebom-mvet society. Music is typically call and response with a chorus and drums alternating. Musicians like Eyi Moan Ndong have helped to popularize folk styles.

A three- or four- person orchestra consisting of some arrangement of sanza, xylophone, drums, zithers and bow harps accompanies the many dances in Equatorial Guinea, such as the balélé and the risque ibanga.[2]

Another popular instrument is the tam-tam, which is a wooden box covered with animal skin. In its center, there are bamboo keys installed with complete musical scales. A second type of tam-tam has two different levels of musical keys. Generally, wooden musical instruments are decorated with fauna images and geometric drawings. Drums are covered with animal skins or animal drawings.[

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, especially national stars Desmali y su Grupo Dambo de la Costa.

Other musicians from Equatorial Guinea include Malabo Strit Band, Luna Loca, Chiquitin, Dambo de la Costa, Ngal Madunga, Lily Afro and Spain-based exiles like Super Momo, Hijas del Sol and Baron Ya Buk-Lu.

• Literature

The literature of Equatorial Guinea in Spanish is relatively unknown, unlike African literature in English, French, and Portuguese. For example, M'bare N'gom, a professor at Morgan State University, searched 30 anthologies of literature in Spanish published between 1979 and 1991 and did not find a single reference to Equatoguinean writers. The same thing occurs in anthologies of African literature in European languages published in the 1980s and in specialized journals such as Research in African Literatures, African Literature Today, Présence Africaine or Canadian Journal of African Studies. This began to change in the late 1990s with the publication of a monograph in the journal Afro-Hispanic Review, and with the conferences Spain in Africa and Latin America: The Other Face of Literary Hispanism at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri in May 1999 and Primer Encuentro de Escritores africanos en Lengua Española (First Encounter with African Writers in the Spanish Language) in Murcia, Spain in November 2000.

• Film industry

The film industry in Equatorial Guinea is practically non-existent at the moment. No recent filmmakers of international repute have come from the country so far. Allthough the country houses a few cinema, the only news worth mentioning is an assasination in the surroundings of a cinema. Another film related piece of information considered Rafael Ekiri Obama, a local who visited Germany and bought some screening equipment. He apparently vanished while he was setting up his projector in an old cinema building. Equatorial Guinea is multi languaged, Spanish, French, English and some African languages, a major barrier in funding and producing films. Being impoverished and in a constant state of military restlessness, developing a cinema to preserve and maintain cultural heritage is a fiction. 


• Famous places

Bata is the second city of E.G. and the first one in the Rio Muni mainland. If you arrive to Bata from Malabo the flight will take you 45min.

Just a two-hour taxi ride from Bata, Monte Alen National Park is a 540-square-mile nature reserve with some of Africa's biggest animals. The park is home to forest elephants, gorillas and chimpanzees, plus crocodiles, birds and insects. Trips depart from Bata regularly; catch a ride on a route taxi (a small bus, basically) labeled for Evinayong and get off at the "EcoFac."

• Architecture history

Thirty-seven percent of the population is urban and 63 percent is rural. On the mainland, the population is dispersed fairly evenly, with the exception of Bata, which is the largest city in the country. Many of its buildings are in the Spanish colonial style and are less than perfectly maintained. Bata is a busy commercial center, with markets, bars, and restaurants. The second-largest town in Río Muni is Ebebiyin in the northeast, near the Cameroon border.

On Bioko, the majority of the population lives in Malabo, which is Equatorial Guinea's capital. The city is fairly clean, and its architecture exhibits Spanish influence. There are shantytowns as well as upper-class neighborhoods, often in close proximity to each other. Luba, with a population of one thousand, is the second-largest town on Bioko.

Map

Leader

Ali Ben Bongo was declared the winner of the presidential election on 3 September 2009. He had been widely tipped to succeed his father, Omar Bongo, who died in June after 42 years in power.

Travel

Visa & travel advice

A

Gabonese visa application form. For online orders, please download, print and sign Gabon visa application, prepared by our system under your account.

B

Original, signed United Kingdom passport with at least 6 months of remaining validity.

C

Passport-type photograph: 1

D

Itinerary. Copy of round trip tickets or confirmed itinerary.

E

Yellow Fever Vaccination. Copy of International Certificate of Vaccination for Yellow Fever.

F

Hotel Reservations. Copy of confirmed hotel reservations.

G

Personal Invitation. If staying with friends or family, a letter of invitation from the host in Gabon, NOTARIZED by the appropriate city hall in Gabon can be used instead of the hotel reservation.

• Best period

Gabon is hot year-round, but it has also has an extensive rainy season. If you are looking for heat and sun, then January.

• Safety

The U.S. Department of State’s consular website has a great deal of information about safety and security in Gabon.

History

The earliest humans in Gabon were believed to be the Babinga, or Pygmies, dating back to 7000 B.C. , who were later followed by Bantu groups from southern and eastern Africa. Now there are many tribal groups in the country, the largest being the Fang peoples, who constitute 25% of the population.

Gabon was first explored by the Portuguese navigator Diego Cam in the 15th century. In 1472, the Portuguese explorers encountered the mouth of the Como River and named it “Rio de Gabao,” river of Gabon, which later became the name of the country. The Dutch began arriving in 1593, and the French in 1630. In 1839, the French founded their first settlement on the left bank of the Gabon estuary and gradually occupied the hinterland during the second half of the 19th century. The land became a French territory in 1888, an autonomous republic within the French Union after World War II, and an independent republic on Aug. 17, 1960.

Arts & Culture

• Music

Gabon's music includes several folk styles and pop. Gabonese pop artist Patience Dabany, who now lives in the US, produces albums recorded in Los Angeles with a distinctively Gabonese element; they are popular throughout Francophone Africa. Other musicians include guitarists Georges Oyendze, La Rose Mbadou and Sylvain Avara, and the singer Oliver N'Goma. Imported rock and hip hop from the US and UK are popular in Gabon, as are rumba, makossa and soukous.

The national anthem of Gabon is "La Concorde", written and composed by Georges Aleka Damas and adopted in 1960 upon independence.

Gabon's population, estimated at 1,640,286, of whom 42% are minors (July 2013 est.), include four major Bantu groupings; the Fang, the Punu, the Nzebi and the Obamba.

Gabon, to the French ethnographer Barabe, "is to Africa what Tibet is to Asia, the spiritual center of religious initiations",due to the sacred music of the Bwiti, the dominant religious doctrine of the country, variously ascribed to the Fang and the Mitsogho, which involves the use of iboga.

Gabonese folk instruments include the obala.

• Literature

As was the case in the whole of Africa, a rich oral tradition dominated the cultural universe of Gabon until very recently. Written languages - and French in particular - were mainly used for missionary, colonial and economic purposes, and fostered the occupation of the country. It was therefore early American adventurers and missionaries (1842) and later the French, who produced the first texts about Gabon. Père Trilles belongs to the latter category with his publication in 1902 of a story entitled Mille lieues dans l'inconnu: de la côte aux rives du Djah [A Thousand Leagues Into the Unkown: From the Coast to the Banks of the Djah]. Others in this category are Dr Albert Schweitzer and Mgr André Rapona-Walker, an interesting character who was the son of an English merchant and a local Princess. He published an alphabet covering some forty languages spoken in Gabon (1932), as well as Tsogo-French and French-Mpongwé dictionaries.

It was during the 19th century that the first people from Gabon began to explore European cultures (Jean-Rémy Rapontchombo obtained his "Baccalauréat" in France in 1894). Later, newspapers such as L'Echo gabonais [The Gabon Echo] (1904), the Voie coloniale [Colonial Path] (1924) and the Liaison (1950) gave a small number of people in Gabon the opportunity to express their opinions. However, it was only during the 1950s that original literature in French from Gabon flourished. The genre of poetry was the first to make its appearance with authors such as Ndouna Depenaud, Wisi Magangue-Ma-Mbuju, Georges Rawiri and others. In the 1960s Vincent de Paul Nyonda embarked on a theatrical career, and at the beginning of the 1970s the novel appeared on the scene, with Roger Zotoumbat's Histoire d'un enfant [A Child's Story], as well as the first novels by Quentin Ben Mongaryas. During the 1980s, Okoumba-Nkoghé published several novels but it was probably Laurent Owondo who came to be the best known novelist of Gabon of that era. More recently, new talents such as Ludovic Obiang and Jean-Mathieu Angoué-Ondo have emerged in spite of very difficult conditions.

Female Gabonese writing began with the publication of Josette Lima's poetry in Dakar in 1966. In the 1980s, the first novels by Angèle Ntyugwetondo Rawiri were published, followed by Justine Mintsa's in the 1990s. At the turn of the millenium, new writers are making their mark such as Chantal Magalie Mbazoo Kassa, Edna Merey-Apinda, Douka Zita Alida, Sylvie Ntsame, Lucie Mba and Bessora (whose novels 53 cm and Petroleum were very well received).

• Film industry

Gabon gained independence from France in 1960. As with many other african countries the leadership was for from prepared to start a democratic process. The second freely elected president, Albert Bernard Bongo, rapidly took over full control, in a one party system. He turned the local radio and Tv network in one of the most advanced in the region, all to be able to glorify his political system. Bongo influence, the power to replace every candidate in a major public role had an impact on the CENACI (Cinematic Centrre)

• Famous places

Gabon's former president, Omar Bongo, ruled Gabon for almost 42 years, longer than any other country in the world without a monarchy. Famous for his lavish lifestyle and alleged corruption, Bongo built the Presidential Palace, Palais Presidentiel, in Libreville during the 1970s.The $800 million palace is so large it can be seen from the outer edges of Libreville. Even though visitors are not permitted inside the palace, you are able to view its spectacular design and take pictures from the outside.

The Boulevard Triomphal is the main diplomatic artery of Libreville. Although Gabon's longtime ruler, Omar Bongo, was accused of squeezing money out of the economy, he spent some of Gabon's oil riches to develop Libreville into a modern city with a strong infrastructure, including building the Boulevard Triomphal. The Boulevard Triomphal is home to numerous landmark buildings and cultural points of interests in Libreville. Visitors can see the colorful Ministry of Forestry and Environment, the futuristic Ministry of Mines and Petrol, the Economic Ministry, the Senate and the Central Bank of Gabon.

Cirque de Léconi is Gabon's most famous physical landmark. Cirque de Léconi is a deep circular red rock canyon filled with loose sand. Cirque de Léconi is located in the far southeastern corner of Gabon near the Congolese border, a little less than 70 miles from Franceville. Although occasional taxis travel to Cirque de Léconi from Franceville, you will find it easier to rent a 4WD vehicle for your visit, because the area is undeveloped without trails.

• Architecture history

As a building material, cement is seen as a sign of wealth. The cities are rife with it, and all of the government buildings are constructed in cement. In the capital, it is easy to differentiate between buildings that were styled by Gabonese and those done by outside architects. In the villages, the architecture is different. The structures are impermanent. The most economical houses are made from mud and covered in palm fronds. There are houses built from wood, bark, and brick. The brick houses are often plastered with a thin layer of cement with roofs made from corrugated tin. A wealthy family might build with cinder blocks. In addition to the houses, both men and women have distinctive gathering places. The women each have a cuisine, a kitchen hut filled with pots and pans, wood for fire, and bamboo beds set against the walls for sitting and resting. The men have open structures called corps de guards, or gatherings of men. The walls are waist high and open to the roof. They are lined in benches with a central fire.