🇬🇦 Gabon
Libreville
Libreville ('Free City' — named in 1849 when the French navy freed a captured slave ship and settled the freed enslaved people at this location on the Gabon Estuary of the Atlantic Ocean) is the capital and largest city of Gabon — a country of 2.4 million people in equatorial Central Africa, on the Atlantic coast between Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. Libreville (population 800,000; over half of Gabon's entire population in one city) is unusual among African capitals in several respects: Gabon is one of the wealthiest countries in sub-Saharan Africa per capita (GDP per capita approximately USD 8,000 — higher than some Southern African countries) due to its oil production (petroleum discovered 1956; Gabon has been an OPEC member since 1975; the oil revenue has funded a relatively high standard of living and extensive forest preservation); and 88% of Gabon's land area is covered by intact tropical rainforest (the Congo Basin rainforest, the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world after the Amazon, extends across Gabon; the government has committed to protecting 30% of this forest as national parks (Gabon has 13 national parks covering 11% of its territory — the highest protected area coverage in Africa)). The city itself is built on a series of hills between the Gabon Estuary and the rainforest interior, with a French colonial architectural heritage and an active Atlantic beach scene. Best months: June–September (the Gabonese dry season).