Gabonese Republic
África Central
Jungle · Gorilla · Coastal
Gabon protects over 88% of its land under forest cover and has 13 national parks — it is one of Africa's greenest and most biodiverse countries, sheltering half the world's forest elephants and vast gorilla populations.
Más allá de la capital, las principales ciudades son Port-Gentil, Franceville — cada una un centro de cultura regional, economía e historia. Libreville (meaning 'Free Town') was founded in 1849 as a settlement for freed slaves — a name and founding purpose shared with Sierra Leone's Freetown in a pattern of coastal West African cities with emancipatory origins — now Gabon's capital and economic centre, a relatively prosperous African city built on oil revenues that have given Gabon the highest HDI in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa.
El idioma oficial es francés, que refleja el patrimonio cultural del país y lo conecta con una amplia comunidad internacional. Internacionalmente, Gabon se contacta mediante el código +241. Gabonese society reflects the petroleum wealth that has funded infrastructure while creating economic dependence — a small, urbanised population (90% of 2.3 million live in cities) with the consumption patterns of a middle-income country whose oil revenues will decline as reserves deplete, making the diversity of the economy through forest product management and ecotourism a stated but insufficiently implemented priority.
Gabon comparte sus fronteras con República del Congo, Guinea Ecuatorial, Camerún. El tráfico rodado circula por la derecha, en consonancia con la convención de
La vida económica y cotidiana se rige por la zona horaria de UTC+01:00, alineando el país con sus vecinos regionales.
Nyembwe chicken — cooked in palm oil and African pepper with a distinctive scarlet colour — is Gabon's national dish, a preparation that uses the palm oil that the country's forests produce naturally and that forms the flavour base of Central and West African cooking in a way that olive oil defines Mediterranean cuisine — the fat and the flavour inseparable from the regional identity.
Football is Gabon's sport of passion, with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's career at Arsenal and other European clubs making him the country's most celebrated individual and a player whose international goals record for the national team (30+) defines Gabonese football ambition in a country whose population is barely twice the attendance at a Premier League match.
Lopé National Park protects the transition zone between the Central African rainforest and the Guinean savanna in a landscape where mandrill herds of up to 800 individuals (the world's largest gatherings of this species) emerge from forest to forage in grasslands — a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose cave rock art dates to 400,000 years ago and represents some of Central Africa's most ancient evidence of human presence.