Gabon
Capital: Libreville · Central Africa
Forest civilization of the Fang, Punu and Kota, whose reliquary art electrified world modernism, and home of the Bwiti initiatory religion.
Ethnic communities
- FangNorthern majority; mvet epics and byeri ancestor figures
- PunuFamed white masks (okuyi) of the south
- KotaCopper-clad reliquary guardian figures
- Mitsogo & ApindjiKeepers of the Bwiti religion and iboga rites
More communities of Gabon
- Nzebi · Interior farmers of initiation knowledge
- Mpongwe (Myene) · Estuary trading houses of old Libreville
- Teke · Plateau kin of the Makoko's kingdom
- Obamba & Mbede · Upper-Ogooué savanna communities
- Mitsogo · Bwiti religion's mother culture
- Apindji · Ngounié forest keepers of iboga rites
- Masango · Central forest farming communities
- Vili · Loango-coast traders of the southwest
- Orungu · Ogooué-delta kingdom of the slave-era trade
- Nkomi · Fernan-Vaz lagoon's trading lineages
- Benga & Séké · Northern coast and estuary peoples
- Baka & Babongo · Forest first-people of song and healing
- Bakele · Old hunter-trader forest communities
Languages
Major languages: French, Fang, Myene, Punu, Nzebi
Language families: Niger-Congo (Bantu)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Kingdom of Orungu
- • Loango sphere
Heritage sites
- • Lopé-Okanda (UNESCO cultural landscape)
- • Ivindo
Cultural highlights
National heroes of Gabon
See all African heroesFigures widely honoured here, across politics, sport, the arts and public life.
- Politics & liberation1912–1989
Jean-Hilaire Aubame
Independence politics
Gabonese deputy in the French National Assembly and a leading voice for self-government, later imprisoned after the 1964 crisis.
- Music & the artsb. 1943
Pierre-Claver Akendengué
Music
Blind singer and poet whose work in Myene and French made him the founding figure of modern Gabonese music.
- Sportb. 1989
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
Football
African Footballer of the Year in 2015 and Gabon's record scorer, with title-winning spells in Germany, England and France.
Deep-dive community profiles
Akele (Kele)
Dispersed forest communities of the middle Ogooué whose scattered settlement across half of Gabon reflects a nineteenth century spent moving ahead of the Fang expansion and behind the trade in ivory and rubber.
Open deep profile →Babongo
Gabon's forest people — hunter-gatherers of the interior who are credited across the country with originating Bwiti, the iboga religion that has since spread to their Bantu neighbours and to the world, while remaining the most marginalised community in the country.
Open deep profile →Baka
Forest hunter-gatherers of the western Congo basin — whose yelli and water-drumming polyphonies are among the world's most admired music, whose Jengi forest spirit governs the hunt, and whose land rights are among Africa's most contested.
Open deep profile →Benga
Coastal fishers and traders of Corisco Bay and the Gabonese estuary, the first people on this coast to acquire a written language from American missionaries, and now among the smallest communities in either country they inhabit.
Open deep profile →Benga of Corisco
A small maritime people of the Corisco Bay islands who traded between the Gabon estuary and the sea for three centuries, gave their language to the region's first missionary printing, and now number a few thousand on islands claimed by two countries.
Open deep profile →Bisio (Bujeba)
A small forest people of the Río Muni interior — squeezed between the Fang who arrived from the north-east and the Ndowe on the coast, holding a language spoken by a few thousand and a body of forest knowledge that goes with it.
Open deep profile →Eshira (Gisir)
Farmers of Gabon's Ngounié and Nyanga valleys whose women's mwiri and bwiti-derived societies are unusually strong, and whose country holds the Fernan Vaz lagoon and the forest where Albert Schweitzer built his hospital.
Open deep profile →Fang
The forest people of the mvet epic and byeri ancestor reliquaries — whose migrations across the equatorial rainforest, guardian sculptures that transfixed Picasso's generation, and harp-zither bards made them Central Africa's great epic civilization.
Open deep profile →Kongo (Bakongo)
Builders of the Kingdom of Kongo — a centralized Atlantic-African state with six centuries of recorded history, its own Christianity, minkisi power objects and a cosmology of the crossroads that profoundly shaped African-American religion and art.
Open deep profile →Kota
The reliquary-makers of eastern Gabon — forest people whose copper-sheathed guardian figures sat atop baskets of ancestral bone, and whose abstract faces were among the objects that redirected European art in 1907.
Open deep profile →Mbeti
Farmers and hunters of the Congo's north-western plateaux around Owando and the Gabonese border, carvers of small standing figures with rounded heads, and neighbours to the forest that holds the world's largest surviving western lowland gorilla population.
Open deep profile →Mitsogo (Tsogo)
Forest people of the Chaillu massif in central Gabon from whom the Bwiti religion spread across the country, keepers of its liturgy, its harp and its temples, and carvers of the white-faced okukwe and mask forms that circulate under other peoples' names.
Open deep profile →Myènè
The coastal traders of Gabon — Mpongwe, Orungu and Nkomi peoples of the estuary and the lagoons who brokered the Atlantic trade for three centuries, whose land became Libreville, and whose mukudji white masks are among Africa's most recognised sculptures.
Open deep profile →Ndowe
The beach people of the Río Muni coast — a cluster of fishing and trading communities who met the first European ships, brokered the coastal trade before the Fang came down from the interior, and whose name for themselves simply means the people of the shore.
Open deep profile →Nzebi
The people of Gabon's southern plateaux — ironworkers and hunters whose mvet-like epics and mungala judicial poison ordeals structured a society without chiefs, and whose region holds the manganese that pays for the country.
Open deep profile →Obamba (Mbaamba)
People of the Haut-Ogooué plateaux around Franceville, makers of the brass-and-copper reliquary guardians that Picasso's generation seized on, and inhabitants of the province whose manganese and uranium built modern Gabon.
Open deep profile →Punu
Carvers of the white-faced okuyi masks that dance on stilts above the Ngounié — serene kaolin faces with scaled foreheads and shell coiffures, among the most recognisable images of Central African art.
Open deep profile →Teke (Bateke)
The plateau kingdom of the Makoko — masters of the Congo River's great markets whose treaty with Brazza founded Brazzaville, whose butti power-figures guard lineages, and whose round tsaayi masks became icons of modern art.
Open deep profile →Tsaangui (Batsangui)
Farmers and hunters of the Niari and Nyanga valleys on the Congo-Gabon border, initiates of the Bwiti religion that spread across Gabon from the Fang and the Mitsogo, and keepers of the mukisi and mungala masking traditions.
Open deep profile →Vili
The people of Loango — a coastal kingdom that traded ivory, copper and captives with Europe for three centuries from a capital of avenues and palaces, and whose carved ivory tusks recorded the trade in spiral relief.
Open deep profile →