Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea is made of a mainland block and a scatter of islands. Río Muni, the larger part, is rainforest on the Atlantic coast of central Africa, crossed by the Mbini river, with gorillas and forest elephants in Monte Alén National Park. Bioko, the main island, rises from the Gulf of Guinea as three volcanic massifs topped by Pico Basilé, and its southern slopes, facing the monsoon, catch some of the heaviest rain in Africa. Little Annobón lies far to the south-west, across the Equator.

The Bubi settled Bioko long before the Portuguese navigator Fernão do Pó sighted it in the 1470s, and the island carried his name, Fernando Pó. Portugal handed the islands and coastal trading rights to Spain in 1778. From 1827 to 1843 Britain kept a base on the island against slavers, and freed Africans who settled there formed a Creole community. Spanish cocoa plantations on Bioko drew labourers from across West Africa, and Spanish Guinea became independent in October 1968.

Fang storytellers sing long epics to the mvet, a harp-zither made from a raffia stem and gourds, and the people of Annobón speak Fá d’Ambô, a creole rooted in Portuguese. Donato Ndongo and Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel write fiction in Spanish. Offshore oil, found in the 1990s, transformed the economy; gas from fields north of Bioko feeds a liquefied gas plant and a methanol works at Punta Europa, and timber from Río Muni leaves through the port of Bata.