Bioko Norte

Bioko Norte illustrates how volcanic geography creates boom-bust resource cycles. This island province, once called Fernando Poo by its Portuguese discoverers in 1472, rises from the Gulf of Guinea as an extension of the Cameroon volcanic chain. Its peak, Pico Basile at 3,012 meters, built the fertile soils that first attracted colonial cocoa plantations, then LNG processing facilities as offshore oil fields matured.

The province hosts Malabo, Equatorial Guinea's capital, and demonstrates extreme resource dependency. Between 1996 and 2004, per capita GDP growth averaged 40% annually as the Zafiro and Alba offshore oil fields came online, vaulting the nation to upper-middle-income status. By 2025, production has collapsed from over 300,000 barrels per day at peak to roughly 80,000, triggering seven consecutive years of recession before a 2.9% recovery in 2022. The World Bank's first-ever Country Economic Memorandum, released March 2025, documents how oil accounted for 80% of revenues even after the boom faded, leaving little diversification.

The colonial period established patterns that persist. Spanish authorities imported thousands of Nigerian workers for cocoa plantations under conditions approaching slavery, while apartheid-like policies suppressed the indigenous Bubi population. Today, the LNG plant in Malabo operates at 5 billion cubic meters annual capacity, but aging fields reduce feedstock. ExxonMobil's 2024 departure underscored declining investor confidence. The government cut corporate tax from 35% to 25% seeking to attract new investment, while the World Bank recommends pivoting toward ecotourism leveraging Bioko's infrastructure. The province faces the classic resource curse trajectory: spectacular wealth concentration during extraction, followed by institutional weakness when resources deplete.