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The title of this article may come as a surprise to some, but lying just south of the armpit of Africa is the nation-state of Equatorial Guinea, Africa’s only Spanish speaking country. The country was previously part of the Spanish Empire and was in fact the last country to gain independence from Spain, being under Spanish control until 1968. To some extent, Equatorial Guinea is a forgotten colony due to the prominence of Latin America in Spain’s colonialist history. However, leaving somewhat of a linguistic anomaly in the African continent, the Equatorial Guinea situation is very interesting.
In the 1470s, Portugal began navigating Africa as they sought trade routes with China. In 1471, a Portuguese navigator by the name of Fernão de Po sighted an island that would become known as Fernando Po and is currently home to Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s capital city. It soon became a hub for trading people who had been captured as slaves. In the 1470s, Portugal began navigating Africa as they sought trade routes with China. In 1471, a Portuguese navigator by the name of Fernão de Po sighted an island that would become known as Fernando Po and is currently home to Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s capital city. It soon became a hub for trading people who had been captured as slaves.
During the 18th century, the Spanish and Portuguese colonisation of South America took off. Portugal laid claim to the vast lands of Brazil; however, Spain was also very interested in this land mass. Through the 1777 Treaty of San Ildefonso, the Queen of Portugal ceded the region (later known as Equatorial Guinea) to Spain in exchange for Spain recognising Portugal’s claim to Brazil. Needing a territory for slave exportation to the Americas, this treaty worked out for Spain.
On the 25th of March 1807, an Act of Parliament was passed by the British to abolish the British slave trade. With Spanish Guinea being primarily used for slavery, it contradicted British global interests. In 1817, Spain signed a treaty abolishing the slave trade within its empire. However, the Caribbean slave trade did not stop and instead grew significantly. Under pressure from the British, the island of Fernando Po was ceded to the British in 1827 and used as an anti-slave trade operative base. But, in 1836, Spain reasserted its sovereignty, and the crown took the island back.
Between 1868 and 1898, a period shaped by the Cuban War of Independence, the island of Fernando Po was turned into a mixture of barracks and prisons for over 600 political deportees from the Caribbean. However, once Spain lost Cuba and the Philippines around the same time, the African colony became hugely more important to Spain’s empire. After this point, the cocoa operation in Spanish Guinea drastically upscaled, from 10,0000 tonnes to 2,850,000 tonnes. The increasing demand for cacao (chocolate) led to this expansion.
But Spain’s operation in Spanish Guinea would soon become problematic, particularly with the 1945 creation of the UN and its goal of universal self-determination for all peoples. The wave of ‘Pan-Africanism,’ coined by Ghanaian politician Kwame Nkrumah, that was sweeping across Africa in the 1960s also motivated the people of Spanish Guinea to break free from Spain. A path for Spanish Guinea’s independence was established, and general elections were held on 22nd September 1968 which elected a President and a National Assembly to lead Spanish Guinea after independence was gained. It should be noted that these were the only elections held in a Spanish territory under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The Guinean population elected Francisco Macías Nguema as President, being the only candidate not trained by the Spanish government. On the 12th of October 1968, independence was gained, and the country was subsequently renamed the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.
Post-election, the Guinean media became a propaganda tool of the new state, with Nguema using this to restrict all social and political relationships with Spain. The practice of Catholicism was seen as suspicious and was prosecuted. Nguema’s obsession to control, manipulate, and censor all articles published in his country blocked all access to information to outsiders, which in turn allowed a cruel dictatorship to unfold with constant violations of human rights. No foreign journalists were allowed into the country. Moreover, by severing its ties with Spain, Equatorial Guinea lost its Spanish markets and its export economy collapsed.
It was the discovery of rich oil reserves in 1991 under the state’s second President, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, that would fuel a new wave of development. This catapulted the state’s national income from $132 million in 1991 to $19 billion in 2012. However, the state has been accused of having high levels of corruption, with only a very small percentage of the national budget being allocated for health and education. Its oil reserves are expected to dry out by 2035, with extraction levels being in decline since 2012.
Today, the country’s 2nd President Teodoro Obiang Nguema is still in power, leading the smallest African member of the UN. It is the richest country in Africa on a per capita basis and has a unique situation where the capital, Malabo, is not on the mainland, but on the island of Bioko. A new capital city, Ciudad de la Paz, is being built to replace Malabo.
Image: Nick Youngson, ‘Equatorial Guinea’ // CC BY-SA 3.0
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