Forgotten World (137): Gabon
Now that Fidel Castro has stepped down as president of Cuba, Gabon holds the dubious distinction of having the world’s longest-serving leader that is not a monarch: Albert-Bernard Bongo has been president for more than 40 years. He has ruled largely unchallenged and mostly without force, despite squandering much of the country’s natural wealth (especially oil) and creating a most uncertain economic future.
Although technically Gabon became a multi-party state in 1993, the opposition has literally been bought off and cronyism and corruption are rife with most of Bongo’s wealth hidden overseas. On paper, Gabon has one of the highest per capita incomes in Africa, but half the population of 1.3 million remains poor. Nearly 50 years after independence from France, the country has fewer miles of paved road than of oil pipelines.