Equatorial Guinea

Bioko island (long called Fernando Pó) was home to the Bubi people, and the mainland to the Fang and smaller coastal groups, when Portugal claimed the islands in the fifteenth century and later ceded them to Spain. Britain used Bioko as an anti-slaving base in the nineteenth century, and Spain slowly developed cocoa plantations there, worked partly by contract labour from Nigeria and Liberia.

Spain governed the islands and the mainland enclave of Río Muni together as "Spanish Guinea." Independence came in 1968 under Francisco Macías Nguema, whose rule became one of the most murderous in post-colonial Africa: perhaps a third of the population was killed or fled into exile, the economy collapsed, and the country was nearly sealed off from the world.

In 1979 Macías was overthrown and executed by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has held power ever since — the longest-serving head of state in the world other than monarchs. The discovery of large offshore oil reserves in the mid-1990s made Equatorial Guinea, on paper, one of the richest countries per person in Africa, though the wealth is very narrowly held and human-rights and corruption concerns are long-standing.

The two main peoples have distinct cultures: the Bubi of Bioko, historically organised in small farming communities with their own language and spiritual traditions, and the Fang of the mainland, a large Bantu group spread across Gabon and Cameroon too, known for reliquary sculpture and the mvet epic-poetry tradition performed to a harp-zither.

Spanish colonial influence left the Catholic Church, the Spanish language, and a Latin-inflected officialdom, and the country keeps cultural ties to Spain and Latin America unusual for the region. Older beliefs and practices, including forms of witchcraft accusation, persist alongside Christianity.

Public cultural life is dominated by the state and the ruling family, and civil society and independent media are heavily restricted, so much cultural expression happens privately or in the diaspora.

Malabo, on Bioko, is the political capital and, with Bata on the mainland, one of the two population centres; a lavish new planned capital, Ciudad de la Paz, is being built in the mainland forest. Most of the roughly 1.7 million people live on the mainland.

Despite the oil revenue, a large share of the population lives in poverty, with limited access to clean water, healthcare, and reliable power outside the main cities; social indicators lag far behind the country's income figures. The oil and gas sector employs relatively few people directly, and there is little other formal economy; subsistence farming and fishing sustain much of the mainland.

Daily life is quiet and closely watched, organised around the family, the church, the market, and — where it exists — government or oil-sector work.

Equatoguinean cooking blends Central African staples with Spanish touches. Cassava, plantain, yam, and rice are the bases, eaten with sauces of groundnut, palm oil, and greens, and with fish and bushmeat. Succotash-style bean and vegetable dishes, grilled fish, and pepper soups are common.

Pepesup (a spicy meat or fish broth) and bambucha rice dishes appear on Bioko, and the Spanish legacy shows in the use of tomato and onion sofrito, in bread, and in the occasional paella-style rice at celebrations. Malamba, a sugarcane spirit, and palm wine are the traditional drinks, alongside imported beer and Spanish wine.

Cocoa and coffee, once the plantation economy of Bioko, are still grown on a small scale, and Bioko's rich volcanic soil produces good produce for local markets.

Tourism is minimal and access is tightly controlled, but the natural setting is genuinely rich. Bioko island is a volcano rising to Pico Basile at over 3,000 metres, cloaked in rainforest that shelters seven species of monkey, several endemic, and whose remote southern beaches — in the Gran Caldera de Luba reserve — host large nesting populations of sea turtles.

Malabo itself has a walkable colonial core around the neo-Gothic cathedral, the old Spanish-era buildings of the Plaza de la Independencia, and a dramatic setting between the sea and the volcano's slopes. The small island of Corisco and the Elobey islets off the mainland coast have quiet beaches.

On the mainland, Monte Alén National Park protects a large block of Congo Basin rainforest with forest elephants, gorillas, and chimpanzees, though infrastructure for visitors is very limited. For most travellers, Equatorial Guinea remains a place to understand rather than to tour.