Gabon

Gabon is a country in Africa.

The equator runs right across it. It is warm and rainy. Most of the land is rainforest. The capital city is called Libreville.

Gabon is on the west coast of Africa, and the equator runs right through it. It is warm and wet all year, and dense rainforest covers about three-fourths of the land.

Gabon has a lot of land for not many people: its 2026 census counted about 3.5 million. More than four out of five people live in towns and cities, and about half live in Libreville, the capital. Gabon was once a French colony, and French is the main language of government and school.

Gabon lies astride the equator on Africa's west coast. Behind a coastal plain, up to 160 km wide in the north, a series of granite plateaus rises to 300–600 m, with the Cristal Mountains in the northwest and the Chaillu Massif south of the Ogooué River. The highest point, Mount Bengoué (1,070 m), is in the northeast.

The 2026 general census counted 3,518,621 residents, and the Constitutional Court confirmed the result in August 2026. Population density is low, yet more than four-fifths of people are urban and about half live in Libreville; almost three-quarters are under 30. A former French colony, Gabon keeps strong ties to France and to French. After a military coup in 2023 and a new constitution in 2024, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema was elected president in April 2025.

Libreville is the capital city.

Its name means Free Town. Big ships come to its port. Deep in the forest are rivers with roaring waterfalls.

Libreville, the capital, began in 1849 as a small settlement of people who had been freed from slavery; its name means Free Town. Today it is the biggest city and the center of business. Port-Gentil, on the coast, is the center of Gabon's wood and oil industries.

In Lambaréné, on the Ogooué River, stands a famous hospital once run by the doctor Albert Schweitzer. Gabon also has two World Heritage Sites: Lopé-Okanda, with its forests, savannas and ancient rock carvings, and Ivindo National Park, with waterfalls and rapids in untouched forest.

Libreville grew from a settlement founded in 1849 by the French officer Édouard Bouët-Willaumez for mainly Vili people freed from slavery, beside an earlier French fort; it is now the administrative capital and commercial center. Port-Gentil is the hub of the wood and petroleum industries, and Franceville, founded in 1880 on the upper Ogooué, Oyem and Moanda are other major towns. Lambaréné is home to the hospital run by Albert Schweitzer from 1924 to 1965, which now bears his name.

Lopé-Okanda (UNESCO, 2007) joins rainforest with relict savanna and holds evidence of settlement over 400,000 years, including iron-working sites and about 1,800 petroglyphs along the Ogooué valley, a major migration route of Bantu-speaking peoples. Ivindo National Park (2021), nearly 300,000 ha, protects waterfalls, rapids and black-water reaches amid very old Caesalpinioideae forest.

It is warm in Gabon every day.

It rains a lot from October to May. Huge trees grow in the rainforest. A big river called the Ogooué flows through it.

Gabon has an equatorial climate: it is hot and humid all year, with daily averages in the upper 20s °C. Libreville gets about 3,050 millimeters of rain a year, almost all of it from October to May. From June to September there is little rain, but the air stays damp.

Rainforest covers about three-fourths of Gabon and has more than 3,000 kinds of plants. One tree, the okoumé, is the most important timber tree. The great Ogooué River crosses the country, and inland the land rises into rolling plateaus and low mountains.

Gabon's equatorial climate keeps temperatures high and steady, with daily averages in the upper 20s °C. Annual rainfall ranges from about 3,050 mm at Libreville to 3,810 mm on the northwest coast, almost all of it between October and May; June to September is nearly rainless but still humid. Along the south coast the northward Benguela Current builds sandbars, while north of Cape Lopez, the most westerly point, the coast becomes more jagged.

Dense equatorial rainforest covers about three-fourths of the land and contains more than 3,000 plant species, including the okoumé, the backbone of the timber industry. UNESCO notes that Lopé-Okanda preserves a record of the rainforest-savanna boundary over the last 15,000 years, and that Ivindo holds very old Caesalpinioideae forests found nowhere else in Central Africa.

Forest elephants walk through Gabon's rainforest.

Gorillas and chimpanzees live there too. Big monkeys called mandrills live there. Gray parrots fly in the trees.

Gabon's rainforest is home to many threatened animals. Forest elephants live there, along with western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees and mandrills, large monkeys of the forest.

In Ivindo National Park live leopards, gray parrots and a rare crocodile with a long, thin snout. UNESCO says Lopé-Okanda is a last refuge for more threatened large mammals than any similar rainforest in the Congo region.

Britannica describes a rainforest inhabited by antelope, monkeys, gorillas, many tropical birds and elephants. UNESCO's account of Ivindo National Park is more specific: the critically endangered forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) and western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla), the endangered chimpanzee and gray parrot, the vulnerable mandrill, leopard, African golden cat and gray-necked rockfowl, three pangolin species, and the critically endangered slender-snouted crocodile.

Lopé-Okanda, by UNESCO's assessment, shelters more threatened large-mammal species than any comparable rainforest area in the Congo Rainforest Biogeographical Province. Ivindo's rivers hold endemic freshwater fish, 13 of them threatened, and riverweeds that may be unique to single waterfalls. Lopé, first protected as a wildlife reserve in 1946, is one of several national parks.

About 3.5 million people live in Gabon.

People speak French and many other languages. Most people live in towns. Football is the favorite sport.

The 2026 census counted about 3.5 million people in Gabon. There are about 40 peoples, and most speak Bantu languages. The Fang, who live in the north, are the largest group. French is the official working language, and nearly all adults can speak it.

Gabon's peoples have long traditions of art, such as carved wooden Punu masks, and the Fang have a long spoken epic called the mvet. Football is the national sport, and basketball is popular too. Port-Gentil is the center of the wood and oil industries.

Britannica counts some 40 peoples; apart from a few thousand Pygmies, they speak Bantu languages in ten linguistic groups. The Fang, north of the Ogooué, are more than one-fourth of the population; the Sira (including the Punu), Nzebi and Mbete together form about one-third, and the Myene (including the Mpongwe and Orungu) played a large role in coastal history. French is the official working language and the sole medium of instruction; Bantu languages are electives in secondary school. Most people are Christian, more than two-fifths of them Roman Catholic, with small Muslim and traditional-religion communities.

Research continues on the Fang epic (mvet) and on Mpongwe, Fang and Kota art, and the International Centre for Bantu Civilizations has been based in Libreville since 1983. Football is the national sport; Gabon first competed at the Olympics in 1972, and Anthony Obame won its first medal, a taekwondo silver, in London in 2012.