Annobón Province

Annobón (Portuguese Ano Bom ) is an island in the Gulf of Guinea and one of the seven provinces of Equatorial Guinea, with its capital at San Antonio de Palé.

Geography

The island is located 189 km south-west of São Tomé and 503 km from Mbini (formerly Río Muni ) away ( from the island of Annobón to the city Bata 587 km ), the continental part of Equatorial Guinea. The Gabonese coast, however, is only 352 kilometers away.

The island is 6.4 km long, up to 3.2 km wide and 17.0 km ². Some 3,400 inhabitants distributed among the villages of San Antonio and San Pedro. They are descended from slaves who were brought by the Spaniards and Portuguese on the island.

Annobón is of volcanic origin. The summit of Pico Quioveo reaches a height of 598 m, the Pico Lago 525 meters above the sea. In the north of the island is the crater lake Lago a pot.

Language

On Annobón Fá d' Ambo is spoken (also Annobonense or Annobonés ), a Portuguese- based Creole, the greater similarity with the Creole on São Tomé and Príncipe than with the Creole of the mainland or of Bioko. Nationally, it is spoken by about 3500 people (other than on Annobón also in a neighborhood of Malabo ).

History

The then uninhabited island was discovered on January 1, 1473 by the Portuguese navigators Pedro Escobar and João de Santarém for Europe and named after the Portuguese New Year's greeting " Ano bom" ( good year). From 1474 the Portuguese settled on the island by Angolan slaves they brought here on São Tomé. The Portuguese were Annobón 1778 in the Treaty of El Pardo in Spain and received as compensation to areas in South America. Later Annobón was merged with the mainland territory Río Muni and the island of Bioko in a single colony from the October 12 In 1968, the Independent State of Equatorial Guinea. Francisco Macías Nguema decreed in 1973 renamed the island in Pagalu, which means something like " Big Cock " means. The rooster (symbol of vigilance and virility ) was the personal symbol of the dictator, which also appeared in the national coat of arms and on banknotes. In 1979 she was renamed again.

See also: History of Equatorial Guinea

Environmental problems

In 1988, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, President of Equatorial Guinea, the British Buckinghamshire Group granted permission to dispose of around ten million tonnes of toxic waste on the island.

In the same year received the American Axim Consortium Group a license to bury about seven million tons of nuclear waste. To this day, every year around two million tonnes of waste are added. Obiang takes a year for a 200 million U.S. dollars. The population sees nothing of this money and live in abject poverty. The island is about to ecological collapse - the plants can not cope with the poison concentration in groundwater and die. Every second, born on the island child suffers from malnutrition, anemia or other diseases.