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This chapter on elections and electoral systems in Equatorial Guinea follows the same format as all the other country chapters in the book. The first section is introductory and contains a historical overview, discussion of the evolution of electoral provisions, an account of the current electoral provisions, and a comment on the electoral statistics. The second section consists of ten tables. These are: 2.1 Dates of National Elections, Referendums, and Coups d’Etat; 2.2 Electoral Body 1963–1996 (data on population size, registered voters, and votes cast); 2.3 Abbreviations (abbreviations and full names of political parties and alliances used in tables 2.6, 2.7, and 2.9); 2.4 Electoral Participation of Parties and Alliances 1968–1996 (participation of political parties and alliances in chronological order and including the years and number of contested elections); 2.5 Referendums 1963–1982 (details of registered voters and votes cast nationally and regionally); 2.6 Elections for Constitutional Assembly (none held); 2.7 Parliamentary Elections 1993 (details of registered voters and votes cast nationally and at constituency level); 2.8 Composition of Parliament 1968–1993; 2.9 Presidential Elections 1968–1996 (details of registered voters and votes cast); and 2.10 List of Power Holders 1968–1998.

This chapter examines degenerative corruption and especially how endemic corruption leads to economic crisis by focusing on four cases: Equatorial Guinea during the Mobutu era (1965–1997), Haiti under the Duvaliers (1957–1986), the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo years (1930–1961), and the Central African Republic during the Bokassa period (1966–1979). It first considers the theoretical differences between degenerative and more benign forms of corruption, including developmental corruption, before discussing degenerative corruption in relation to plunder or looting and kleptocracy. The goal is to explain corruption as process and the implications of differing forms of corruption for economic growth. The chapter also explores the differential effects of auto-corruption and transactive corruption.

Critical heritage studies, indigenous archaeologies, and similar undertakings attempt to recover the repressed memories and experiences of subaltern groups, as well as to deconstruct hegemonic discourses of the past. Thus far, the emphasis has been on remembrance of the powerful and the disempowered. This chapter focuses on the production of oblivion rather than memory, and on the political reasons behind amnesic societies. It investigates what happens when a political regime does not mobilize the past to legitimate its present rule but completely annihilates memory. González-Ruibal asks, What remains when a dictatorship has been so systematic and violent that alternative memories have been thoroughly shattered? Based on a case study in Equatorial Guinea, González-Ruibal explores how the long-term work of domination under different politico-economic regimes has severely damaged collective memory and ended up producing an “anti-heritage.”

This essay takes as point of departure the well-known expression “Africa begins in the Pyrenees,” to evaluate the ways in which two postcolonial authors from Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Zamora Loboch (1948) and Donato Ndongo Bidyogo (1950) express the double consciousness that molds the writing of those living in exile in Spain, displaced by brutal dictatorships. Particular attention is paid to the transatlantic cartographies delineated by Donato Ndongo’s El metro (2007) [The subway], as it dramatizes the negotiation of Africanness in the city of Madrid, an emblem of present-day Fortress Europe. In Francisco Zamora’s case, the essay Cómo ser negro y no morir en Aravaca (1994) [How to be Black and not die in Aravaca] and his 2009 novel Conspiración en el Green (el informe Abayak [Conspiracy in the green (The Abayak report)] demarcate the transatlantic cartographies questioning Spanish social and cultural practices that legitimize violence against Blacks.

Equatorial Guinea is found in west central Africa. It has an area of 28,000 square kilometres (km) and is composed of a mainland, Río Muni, and small islands including Bioko where the current capital Malabo is located. The mainland Río Muni totals about 93 per cent of the nation’s land area and 75–80 per cent of its population. Río Muni is bordered by the Gulf of Guinea, Cameroon in the north, and Gabon in the south and east. The largest city in Equatorial Guinea, Bata, as well as the country’s future planned capital, Oyala, are found on the mainland. In 2016, the population amounted to 1.2 million. The currency used is the Central African franc (CFA). Office hours in the public sector are from 0800 to 1600 from Monday to Friday.

This article examines the presence and absence, visibility and invisibility, of Africa from formulations of the trans-Atlantic focused on Latin America and the Caribbean. It critiques a long naturalised Ibero-American loop that tends to sidestep triangular and rhizomatic configurations and argues, amongst other things, that Spain’s colonization of the Americas finds in Africa both its prologue and its long, still ongoing, epilogue.

In the late 1980s the economy of the small African country of Equatorial Guinea was foundering. Macroeconomic adjustment hadn’t controlled corruption or strengthened the institutions of property, credit, and taxation. As a result, so-called free-market reforms had made little difference in, of all places, the market. Do reforms need to take account of local cultural conditions—including the possibility that what outsiders call development is not a priority? The finance minister explained to me the relevance, in cultures like his, of dictatorship, forced labor, and restrictions of freedom of speech and assembly. Indeed, he argued that Westerners can’t understand apparent torture without an appreciation of his country’s history and political culture. If not so stridently, other Africans agree that culture is a critical variable in advancing, or resisting, various forms of development. Some say, “We need to change our culture to move ahead.” Others argue, “At least we should adjust our policies to our cultural specificities.” How to take culture into account becomes a crucial practical question in development policy and management.

On 13 September 1962 in Libreville, Gabon, twelve Heads of State and Government adhered to the Agreement on the creation of the African and Malagasy Office of Industrial Property (OMAPI). The departure of Madagascar, the attribution of new competences in the area of copyright, and the need to interlink intellectual property with development soon created a need for a revised agreement. This led to the revision of the agreement in Bangui, Central African Republic on 2 March 1977 and to the creation of the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI, an acronym of Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle). A new revision of the agreement took place on 24 February 1999 to ensure the conformity of the agreement to the dispositions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), to which all the Member States are party. This new agreement entered into force on 28 February 2002. Today the OAPI has seventeen Member States and represents more than 100 million inhabitants.

The indignant tears of a child command attention. Daniel, aged eight, has just learned about the Brazilian rain forest and it has moved him to his first expression of political outrage. It is directed at me, not as his father, but as representative of the generation of adults who are destroying something precious before he reaches the age at which he can stop us. Through sobs and rage he shouts, “Tell the president!” Having seen me on television, Daniel has a somewhat inflated impression of my influence. Eight-year-olds are not, on the whole, always repositories of good sense, and Daniel is no exception. But by chance his anger is right on target: son and father are ethically aligned in the battleground of natural assets. First, the left flank. I agree with environmentalists that nature is special: at some level most of us recognize that. But why is it special? Mainstream environmentalists, such as Stewart Brand, offer one answer. Nature is especially vulnerable and that matters because, being dependent upon it, mankind is thereby vulnerable. But as Brand argues, many environmentalists are carrying ideological baggage that needs to be discarded. For romantic environmentalists nature is incommensurate with the mundane business of the economy: it is in some way ethically prior. Echoing Baron d’Holbach’s diagnosis of modern angst, they see industrial capitalism as having divorced us from the natural world which it is rapidly destroying. You can sense their discomfort with modern industrial society in the language that they use, replete with words such as “organic” and “holistic.” For a recent variation on the theme of Holbach, watch Prince Charles delivering the BBC’s 2009 distinguished Dimbleby Lecture. Perhaps man needs to return to a simpler, nonindustrial lifestyle. Prince Charles produces organic food, and he has created a village, Poundsbury, in the style of the eighteenth century—the last age prior to industrialization. At the extreme end of romantic environmentalism the diagnosis is more radical: mankind itself has become the enemy of what is truly good. Reflecting these sentiments, there is now a considerable cult that relishes the prospect of the extinction of mankind.

Cameroon is found in Central Africa and is bordered by Nigeria, Chad, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo. Due to its strategic location, Cameroon is the maritime gateway for commercial goods to the landlocked region of Central Africa (Chad, Central African Republic, and northern Congo). It has an area of 475,442 square kilometres (km) and has a population of 23.4 million inhabitants. Its capital is Yaoundé, but the largest city in terms of population and economic importance is Douala, where the main seaport and the busiest airport of Cameroon, Douala International Airport, are found. The autonomous port of Douala represents 80–85 per cent of the maritime transport of Cameroon and is the largest port in the CEMAC (Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa). A secondary airport is found in Yaoundé, the Yaoundé Nsimalen International Airport.

Gabon is located in central Africa. It is bordered by Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, and the Republic of Congo. A sparsely populated country covered at 85 per cent of its territory with forests, Gabon has a population of 1.7 million over a territory of 26,000 square kilometres (km). The population is highly urbanized, with more than four in five Gabonese living in the cities. The capital Libreville and Port-Gentil, the economic capital of the country hosts 59 per cent of the population. The official language of Gabon is French, and the currency used is the CFA.

Africa is rising: its growing middle and upper class represent an untapped, dynamic, fast-moving, and competitive market that businesses can scarcely ignore. Household consumption in Africa has increased faster than the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP), which itself has consistently outpaced the global average. Consumer expenditure is growing at a compound annual rate of 3.9 per cent since 2010, from US$1.4 trillion in 2015 to an expected $2.5 trillion by 2030. If one adds the importance of brand recognition to African buyers, the young and growing population, the rapid urbanization, and the spread of Internet and mobile phones on the continent, Africa’s emerging economies present exciting opportunities for rights holders.