Nearly eight months after being declared the new political capital of Equatorial Guinea, Ciudad de la Paz remains a ghost town, almost lifeless, nestled in the heart of the equatorial forest. On the edge of the wide empty avenues of this new town surrounded by thick vegetation, there are two brand new hotels, a large hospital, a university, several official buildings but still no inhabitants, nor shops, nor schools.
“We still don't see anything here that would suggest that we are in a capital,” observes Cipriano Ela, a university teacher, interviewed by AFP. At the beginning of January, a presidential decree officially made Ciudad de la Paz, formerly Oyala, the new capital of this small authoritarian central African state of 2 million inhabitants, rich in its oil.
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“Apart from the identification center which issues identity cards and passports more quickly than others, nothing has changed,” says another resident of Oyala Poblado, a shantytown adjoining the new capital. A period of one year was granted to institutions to leave the former capital, Malabo, a city of around 300,000 inhabitants located on the island of Bioko, in the Gulf of Guinea. Malabo had been the country's capital since its independence from Spain in 1968. This transfer moves the seat of power to the heart of the country, not far from the borders with Cameroon and Gabon.
Break with the colonial period
This project was launched in 2008 by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, in power for 47 years. For his son, Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, nicknamed “Teodorin”, this change is explained firstly by the “strategic and central location of the Ciudad de la Paz, designed to guarantee a more balanced, efficient and coherent administration throughout the national territory”, he wrote on X in January.
This also makes it possible to break “with the structures inherited from the colonial period, after 57 years of independence”, according to the vice-president. This is reminiscent of other similar transfers in Africa, such as that of the capital of Ivory Coast from Abidjan to Yamoussoukro in 1983 or that of the capital of Nigeria from Lagos to Abuja in 1991. In fact, the old capitals often remain more attractive, more populated and more economically dynamic than the new cities established as political capitals.
This transfer is financed by the Equatorial Guinean state, which has grown considerably since the discovery of large oil deposits in the early 1990s. To give life to this new city planned on 32,000 hectares for 65,000 inhabitants, built by Chinese, Korean and even Italian companies, the authorities are staging the start of the transfer. On August 3, an agreement was signed by the Equatoguinean government with the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA) to develop electrification and housing.
“No hospitals, no schools, no supermarkets”
A parliamentary session was even officially opened in July in the new seat of Parliament, before the elected officials left for Bata, the economic capital of the country, located on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea, approximately 170 km away. For the vice-president, this transfer should lead to “the creation of thousands of jobs, thanks to the infrastructure that the government is already building and will continue to develop in order to accommodate new state institutions, public services as well as the economic activity that will follow”. The rapid urban growth of the cities of Malabo and Bata - which has nearly 500,000 inhabitants - in recent years is part of the reasons which pushed the authorities to change capital.
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This growth has been fueled by a constant influx of population from rural areas and small towns, due to the concentration of infrastructure, public services, jobs and offices in these two cities, according to the decree-law published in January. But today, the absence of public services and businesses is the main obstacle to the transfer of institutions and residents to Ciudad de la Paz. Several employees of the presidential party, the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE), tell AFP they left Malabo but say they have since been “stranded in Bata”.
