Equatorial Guinea & Gabon
New road link between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea

afrol.com, 14 February - A new inland road connection between Mongomo (Equatorial Guinea) and Oyem (Gabon) reportedly has been assured its funding. While the road will connect the inland village of the Equatorial Guinean president and ruling class with Gabon, the new capital Bata remains almost isolated.

The Equatorial Guinean opposition has already criticised the financing of the road project, being an investment of little use to the population. Mongomo is a small town at the far east end of the Río Muni mainland of Equatorial Guinea. It is connected to Bata through a long and ill-managed dirt road, and to Cameroon and Gabon through another, even worse, dirt road over Ebebiyín. The country's rulers, however, usually arrive through the international airport constructed at the small town.

Mongomo is also connected to Gabon through a 45 km long dirt road of very poor quality to Oyem, the regional centre of northern Gabon. This road will now be paved with Equatorial Guinean financing, although 43 of the 45 km are on Gabonese soil. The contract is given to the Gabonese company SOBEA, and the new road is to open in 2002. Construction costs are put to 4.5 billion franc CFA (an estimated 5.5 million US$).

As the there is no good connection from Mongomo to the rest of Equatorial Guinea, the Mongomo-Oyem connection will only serve local trade and provide a security outlet for the president and government officials frequently visiting the town. The road therefore already has been equalled to a long row of failed infrastructure development projects in the two countries.

As afrol.com and IPS reported earlier this month, Gabon has experienced a general failure in improving its highway system, although road improvement and construction programmes have swallowed up enormous sums of money over the last decade. The issue of nation-wide road construction now even has divided the Gabonese government, and resulted in the recent resignation of Zacharie Myboto, the Minister of Equipment, Construction and Cities. 

Gabonese government leaders acknowledge that the mismanagement of road construction and rebuilding funds explains the country's absence of reliable ground transportation and road connections to neighbour countries. "The lack of regular, trucked-in deliveries of foodstuffs and other products from the interior of the country, from Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea etc. has begun to take its toll in the past few months, so much so that prices have gone up," Souleymane Gerba, a wholesaler at a Libreville market told IPS. 

The neighbours Gabon and Equatorial Guinea are among the richest countries in sub-Saharan Africa due to large oil resources and low population. While Gabon has had high oil revenues for decades, Equatorial Guinea only this month inaugurated its third oil platform. Equal for both countries is that only a small, ruling fragment of the population gains from the oil revenues, while public investments do not reach the people at large.

In the Equatorial Guinean case, infrastructure investments have been close to zero since the country was left with a fairly good network of roads at independence in 1968. Lack of maintenance has resulted in the collapse of the road between the mainland capital of Bata and southern border town Cogo, the natural link to Libreville in Gabon. Also the 230 km long road connection between Bata and the northeastern border town of Ebebiyín, connecting Equatorial Guinea to Cameroon, is becoming close to impassable. 

The only main infrastructure projects in Equatorial Guinea the last years have been the construction of the international airport in Mongomo and, lately, investments in the local road net of Bata. Bata, on the Río Muni mainland, was made the new capital last year. It took over from Malabo on the island of Bioko, where the Mongomo-originated government finds most opposition.

The Equatorial Guinean opposition has already manifested its protest to the 5 million US$ Mongomo-Oyem project. The opposition party Union for Democracy and Social Development (UDDS) this week stated that the project was "a present from the Equatorial Guinean president to his Esangui [Fang people of the Mongomo-Oyem region] brothers in Gabon, starting the third millennium with thanking for the support the Gabonese government is giving him." 

Gabon is seen as one of the closest allies to the Equatorial Guinean dictatorships. The target of the road, Gabonese Oyem, is the main urban centre of the Esangui Fang people. Oyem is connected to the Gabonese network of roads through laterite roads to Libreville (543 km) and to the Cameroonian border (110 km). Well-equipped traders in Oyem will be able to serve the market of Mongomo with the new road opened. 

The UDDS also reminded of the poor economics of the project "while Equatorial Guinea is suffering from a poor infrastructure, where several regions have been out of communication for years." In accordance with the rest of the country's opposition, it asks where the oil revenues, which are not publicly accounted for, are going.

Meanwhile, both Equatorial Guinean president Obiang and Gabonese president Bongo are involved in national campaigns against corruption and the disappearance of public funds. These are, however, mostly interpreted as internal power struggles of the two regimes and do not target the reasons behind the widespread corruption. A real development of the regional infrastructure, such as the needed Bata-Libreville connection, therefore is not expected to materialise for long time.

Sources: La Diáspora, IPS and afrol archives

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