Gabon, officially the Gabonese Republic, is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo on the east and south, and the Gulf of Guinea to the west. It has an area of nearly 270,000 square kilometres (100,000 sq mi) and its population is estimated at 2.3 million people. There are coastal plains, mountains, and a savanna in the east.
Despite Gabon's small population, this Central African country is home to many different Bantu tribes and a small pygmy population.
In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature for populations in which adult men are on average less than 150 cm tall.
The Mbuti people, or Bambuti, are one of several indigenous pygmy groups in the Congo region of Africa. Their languages are Central Sudanic languages and Bantu languages.
The Teke people or Bateke, also known as the Tyo or Tio, are a Bantu Central African ethnic group that speak the Teke languages and that mainly inhabit the south, north, and center of the Republic of the Congo, the west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a minority in the south-east of Gabon. Omar Bongo, who was President of Gabon in the late 20th century, was a Teke.
The Aka or Biaka are a nomadic Mbenga pygmy people. They live in southwestern Central African Republic and in northern Republic of the Congo. They are related to the Baka people of Cameroon, Gabon, northern Congo, and southwestern Central African Republic.
French is the official language in Gabon, however 32% of the people speak Fang as a mother tongue. French is the medium of instruction. Before World War II very few Gabonese learned French, nearly all of them working in either business or government administration. After the war, France worked for universal primary education in Gabon, and by the 1960-61 census, 47% of the Gabonese over the age of 14 spoke some French, while 13% were literate in the language. By the 1990s, the literacy rate had risen to about 60%.
The Baka people, known in the Congo as Bayaka, are an ethnic group inhabiting the southeastern rain forests of Cameroon, northern Republic of the Congo, northern Gabon, and southwestern Central African Republic. They are sometimes called a subgroup of the Twa, but the two peoples are not closely related. Likewise, the name "Baka" is sometimes mistakenly applied to other peoples of the area who, like the Baka and Twa, have been historically called pygmies, a term that is now considered derogatory.
Ngounié is a province of south-central Gabon covering an area of 3,775 kilometres (2,346 mi). Its capital is Mouila. At the 2013 census it had 100,838 inhabitants. In 2016, its governor was Benjamin Nzigou.
In cultural anthropology, sedentism is the practice of living in one place for a long time. As of 2022, the large majority of people belong to sedentary cultures. In evolutionary anthropology and archaeology, sedentism takes on a slightly different sub-meaning, often applying to the transition from nomadic society to a lifestyle that involves remaining in one place permanently. Essentially, sedentism means living in groups permanently in one place. The invention of agriculture led to sedentism in many cases, but the earliest sedentary settlements were pre-agricultural.
Lese is a Central Sudanic language of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as a name for the people who speak this language. The Lese people, live in association with the Efé Pygmies and share their language, which is occasionally known as Lissi or Efe.
Aka, also known as Yaka or Beka, is a Bantu language spoken in the Central African Republic and Republic of Congo, along the Ubangi River dividing the two countries.
The Kwasio language, also known as Ngumba / Mvumbo, Bujeba, and Gyele / Kola, is a language of Cameroon, spoken in the south along the coast and at the border with Equatorial Guinea by some 70,000 members of the Ngumba, Kwasio, Gyele and Mabi peoples. Many authors view Kwasio and the Gyele/Kola language as distinct. In the Ethnologue, the languages therefore receive different codes: Kwasio has the ISO 639-3 code nmg, while Gyele has the code gyi. The Kwasio, Ngumba, and Mabi are village farmers; the Gyele are nomadic Pygmy hunter-gatherers living in the rain forest.
Baka is a dialect cluster of Ubangian languages spoken by the Baka Pygmies of Cameroon and Gabon. The people are ethnically close to the Aka, the two together called the Mbenga (Bambenga), but the languages are not related, apart from some vocabulary dealing with the forest economy, which suggests the Aka may have shifted to Bantu, probably 15000 people have shifted.
Bila, or Forest Bira, is a Bantu language spoken in the Mambasa Territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is also spoken by the Mbuti Pygmies who live in that area. Pygmy groups to the west include the Kango and Sua (Batchua). Other Mbuti speak Central Sudanic languages. The Kango and Sua speak distinct dialects, but not enough to impair mutual intelligibility with their farming Bila patrons.
The Gyele, also known as the Kola (Bakola) or Koya (Bakoya), are the pygmies of southern Cameroon and adjacent areas of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. They live among Bantu patrons, the Mvumbo and Bassa. They speak a variety of or a language closely related to Mvumbo.
The Congo Pygmies are those "forest people" who have, or recently had, a hunter-gatherer economy and a simple, non-hierarchical societal structure based on bands, are of short stature, have a deep cultural and religious affinity with the Congo forest and live in a generally subservient relationship with agricultural "patrons", with which they trade forest products such as meat and honey for agricultural and iron products.
Iyasa is a Bantu language spoken in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea by the Iyasa and Ndowe coastal fishing peoples. It is also spoken by Pygmies, perhaps Babongo, in Gabon. Approximately 3,000 people speak Iyasa, though some note that this number may be an overestimation.
The African Pygmies are a group of ethnicities native to Central Africa, mostly the Congo Basin, traditionally subsisting on a forager and hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They are divided into three roughly geographic groups:
The Bakoya are pygmies, earlier known as Négrilles or Babinga, who inhabitant the rainforest between Cameroon and the Great Lake region of the Congo Basin in Central Africa. Since the 1930s, the Bakoya, in particular, have settled in Gabon in the Ogooue-Ivindo Province, in the northeastern region of the country. Similar minority groups are the Babongo and the Baka pygmies. Before they adapted to the agricultural practices in the new settlements in Gabon along the flanks of the road, Bakoya were “semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers” like the other forest-dwelling pygmies; they resided in small huts. The word 'Pygmee' is a French coinage, adopted by the Gabonese. They are the earliest inhabitants of the forest and are nomadic hunter gatherers.
