50 Fun Facts About Gabon

What is the capital and largest city of Gabon?

Libreville began in 1849 as a village for people freed from a captured slave ship, who held an election and chose a man named Mountier as their mayor.

Gabon's name is usually traced to a hooded cloak that sailors saw in what?

An estuary: Portuguese navigators of the 1470s are said to have seen a gabão, their word for a hooded cloak, in the outline of the Komo river's mouth, and the name later spread to the whole country.

In its boom years under Omar Bongo, Gabon was said to drink more of what per head than any other country?

Champagne: true or not, the story dates from an oil boom that made the president's circle fabulously rich while doing little to lift the rest of Gabon out of poverty.

Omar Bongo likened a France without its African partners to a car without what?

Fuel: France had huge oil interests in Gabon, and the other half of his line was that without France his own side would be a car without a driver.

Omar Bongo held what distinction after Fidel Castro stepped down in 2008?

World's longest-ruling non-royal leader: in power since 1967, Bongo made Gabon a one-party state and, once rivals were allowed, won every election for the rest of his life.

The 2023 coup that removed Ali Bongo was led by Brice Oligui Nguema, who is his what?

Cousin: Oligui Nguema had been a bodyguard to Ali Bongo's father and commanded the Republican Guard, the elite unit charged with protecting the very government he overthrew.

Gabon's Mayumba beaches are Africa's busiest nesting ground for which sea turtle?

Leatherback, the largest turtle of all: so many come ashore to lay their eggs that Gabon made the coast a national park in 2002 to protect the nesting beach.

Which US reality show filmed its 17th season in Gabon in 2008, subtitled 'Earth's Last Eden'?

Survivor: the season was won by Bob Crowley, a physics teacher from Maine, who crafted two fake immunity idols to bluff his rivals.

A famous photograph taken on Gabon's Loango coast shows which animals surfing in the Atlantic?

Hippos: Michael Nichols's picture of them in the surf is credited with inspiring President Omar Bongo to create Gabon's national parks, which cover about a tenth of the country.

The Oklo site in Gabon is known for what unique geological phenomenon?

A natural nuclear reactor: about two billion years ago groundwater seeped into rich uranium ore and set off chain reactions that switched on and off for hundreds of thousands of years.

Rocks near Franceville, Gabon, hold 2.1-billion-year-old shapes that may be the earliest traces of what?

Multicellular life: if the disc-like shapes, up to 17 cm across, are fossils, they push its origin back by some 1.5 billion years, though critics say minerals alone could have formed them.

Which Nobel Peace Prize winner founded a hospital at Lambaréné in 1913?

Albert Schweitzer, an Alsatian doctor and concert organist, ran the hospital until he died there in 1965, and spent his Nobel Prize money on a village for leprosy patients.

In 2023 Gabon was the world's No. 2 producer of which ore, vital for steel and batteries?

Manganese: before the Trans-Gabon Railway reached the mines at Moanda, the ore left the country the other way, swinging 76 km into Congo on one of the world's longest cableways.

Gabon lies on which line of latitude?

The Equator runs through the middle of Gabon, which is why the country is hot and wet all year and why rainforest covers nearly nine-tenths of it.

Which of these countries shares a land border with Gabon?

Cameroon lies along Gabon's northern edge; Angola only comes close, because its Cabinda exclave is cut off from Gabon by a strip of the Republic of the Congo.

Gabon's flag is a horizontal tricolour of green, blue and which colour in the middle?

Yellow, for the sun: the band was only a thin stripe on a flag that also carried a small French Tricolour until days before independence in 1960, when the Tricolour was dropped and the yellow widened.

Gabon joined which international association in June 2022, on the same day as Togo?

Commonwealth of Nations: both newcomers were former French colonies with no constitutional link to Britain, and Gabon was partly suspended the following year, after its 2023 coup.

Who was Gabon's first president, elected in 1961?

Léon M'ba spent more than a decade in exile from Gabon before he entered politics, and used it to write what became the standard account of Fang customary law.

When an army coup toppled Gabon's president in 1964, who restored him to power within days?

French paratroopers: de Gaulle sent them under a defence agreement signed at independence, and the restored president then shut himself away in his palace under French guard.

Which explorer led his first mission to the Gabon-Congo area in 1875 and founded Franceville?

Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, born in Rome, set out with cloth and tools to barter instead of an armed column, and the capital of the neighbouring Congo republic still bears his name.

Gabon holds more than half the world's population of which animal?

African forest elephant: a 2021 count put some 95,000 in Gabon, even though poachers had wiped out about four-fifths of the herd in one of its national parks within a decade.

The freed slaves resettled at the future capital's site in 1849 came from a captured slave ship of which nationality?

Brazilian: Brazil and Cuba were then the main markets for captives shipped from this coast, and the French navy seized the ship, L'Elizia, in 1846 while helping Britain's anti-slavery blockade.

The Gaboon viper, named after Gabon, has the longest what of any venomous snake?

Fangs: the viper is extremely venomous too, yet it is so placid and slow-moving that it very rarely bites people.

Gabon's national football team is nicknamed after which animal, the country's national symbol?

Panthers: when Gabon hosted the Africa Cup of Nations in 2017, it also chose a black panther, named Samba, as the tournament's mascot.

Under house arrest after the 2023 coup, Ali Bongo posted a video in English urging his friends to do what?

Make noise: 'I don't know what is going on,' he said in the clip, while crowds in the capital were out celebrating the soldiers who had removed him.

Gabon's national football team is best known for which striker, a former Arsenal captain?

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was born in France and played once for its under-21 side before choosing Gabon, the country his father had played for; in 2015 he became its first African Footballer of the Year.

Gabon hosted the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations after civil war cost which country the tournament?

Libya had already swapped the 2013 tournament with South Africa because of one civil war, then lost the 2017 edition to a second; Gabon, the stand-in host, went out in the group stage.

Anthony Obame won Gabon's first Olympic medal, a silver at London 2012, in which sport?

Taekwondo: Obame led the heavyweight final against Italy's Carlo Molfetta until the closing seconds, lost on a judges' decision after a tie, and still came home to thousands of cheering supporters.

Which lender refused to fund the Trans-Gabon Railway as uneconomic?

World Bank: when it turned the scheme down, the 1973 oil boom let Bongo press on with the 648 km 'Bongo Train', saying he would make a pact with the devil if he had to.

Which monkey roams Gabon's Lopé National Park in hordes of several hundred, possibly the largest groups of any wild primate?

Mandrill: one horde counted at Lopé held 625 animals, mostly females and young, because the big adult males live alone and rejoin the group only for the breeding season.

Lopé National Park, Gabon's first protected area, was listed by UNESCO in 2007 partly for what?

Its petroglyphs: well over a thousand rock carvings line the river valley, left by peoples moving along one of the main routes by which Bantu speakers spread into central and southern Africa.

Initiates of Gabon's Bwiti religion eat the root bark of which hallucinogenic shrub?

Iboga: a massive dose brings on the visions at the heart of the rite, and its main alkaloid, ibogaine, has drawn interest abroad as a treatment for drug addiction despite risks to the heart.

Which music star came to perform in Gabon in 1980 at the invitation of President Bongo's daughter, whom he then dated?

Bob Marley played there with the Wailers at the end of his Survival tour, and Pascaline Bongo talked about their romance decades later in the documentary Marley.

Which Victorian traveller canoed up Gabon's main river in 1895, collecting fish for the British Museum?

Mary Kingsley brought back three fish new to science that were later named after her, and told the story in her book Travels in West Africa.

Ali Bongo's 1970s funk album, A Brand New Man, was produced by the manager of which American star?

James Brown: his manager Charles Bobbit produced the record for the president's teenage son, after Brown and his band had played at Omar Bongo's birthday party.

Gabon's provinces are mostly named after which river and its stretches?

Ogooué: the river drains nearly the whole country, so five of the nine provinces carry its name, from Haut-Ogooué in the uplands to Ogooué-Maritime at the delta.

In June 2021 Gabon became the first African country to do what?

Be paid for cutting deforestation: Norway handed over $17 million through a UN-backed forest fund, the first slice of a $150 million deal, once Gabon had shown its forest loss was falling.

France gained its first foothold in Gabon in 1839 when what happened?

A local chief surrendered his sovereignty: the Mpongwe ruler known as King Denis signed a treaty with a naval captain sent to curb the slave trade, and a neighbouring chief followed two years later.

Omar Bongo abolished the vice-presidency in 1975 and replaced it with what office?

Prime minister, a post with no automatic right to succeed him: Bongo had himself become president that way in 1967, as the vice-president in office when his predecessor died.

The 1994 devaluation of which currency helped tip Gabon into debt problems?

CFA franc: overnight in January 1994 it was cut to half its value against the French franc, the currency it had been pegged to since colonial times.

A research centre in Franceville, Gabon, is known worldwide for its work on which virus?

Ebola: the centre, founded in 1974 with the oil company Elf, investigated the outbreaks that struck Gabon between 1994 and 2002 and runs one of Africa's few maximum-security virus laboratories.

Poulet nyembwe, regarded as Gabon's national dish, is chicken stewed in a sauce made from what?

Palm nuts: 'nyembwe' is the Myènè word for palm oil, and the same stew, under the name moambe, is also claimed as a national dish by Angola and both Congos.

An orange population of which bat-eating reptile lives in total darkness in Gabon's Abanda caves?

Dwarf crocodile: the cave dwellers hunt bats and crickets in the dark and swim in liquid bat guano, which is thought to be what has turned their skin orange.

Which organisation did Gabon quit in 1995 after being refused a lower membership fee, only to rejoin in 2016?

OPEC: Gabon was its smallest member, yet every member paid the same annual dues of about $1.8 million whatever its output, and the group would not give it a discount.

Which Hollywood film shot its jungle backdrops over six weeks in Gabon, by helicopter and without its cast?

The Legend of Tarzan: the actors never left England, where the jungle was rebuilt in a studio, while a helicopter crew filmed Gabon's forests to stand in for the Congo.

Jean Ping, runner-up in Gabon's disputed 2016 election, had earlier chaired the Commission of which body?

African Union: Ping ran its Commission from 2008 to 2012 after nine years as Omar Bongo's foreign minister, then quit the ruling party and stood against the late president's son.

In 1911 France gave a strip of northern Gabon to which empire for a free hand in Morocco?

Germany: the swap settled the Agadir crisis, in which a German gunboat had been sent to a Moroccan port, but French troops took the land back during the First World War.

Okoumé, the main timber tree of Gabon's forests, is used chiefly to make what?

Plywood: the wood is weak but light and easy to bend, which makes it a favourite for boat hulls, and it has even gone into French-built light aircraft.

The stadium that staged the 2012 and 2017 Africa Cup of Nations finals in Gabon was built by which country?

China: a Shanghai firm built the 'Sino-Gabonese Friendship Stadium', and football's five-time world champions came to play the first match there in 2011, beating the hosts 2–0.

Which whales gather off Gabon's coast each year to breed?

Humpback whales: they are one reason Gabon's southernmost national park stretches 15 km out to sea, protecting the breeding waters as well as the beach.