Ali Bongo Ondimba

Ali Bongo Ondimba was president of Gabon from 2009 until the army removed him in 2023, ending fifty-six years of rule by one family. His father Omar Bongo had governed since 1967 and was among the longest serving heads of state anywhere. Ali served as foreign minister and then for a decade as defence minister before succeeding him, in an election that opponents disputed and that produced riots in Port-Gentil. Gabon under both Bongos was oil-rich and poor: a small population, one of the higher per-capita incomes in Africa, and a third of it living below the poverty line, with French commercial and military interests deeply embedded. The 2016 election was decided by his home province returning over ninety-five per cent turnout with almost all votes for him. He suffered a stroke in Riyadh in 2018 and was absent for months, which prompted a brief failed mutiny in 2019 and persistent questions about who was governing. In August 2023, minutes after the electoral commission declared him re-elected for a third term, officers of the republican guard under General Brice Oligui Nguema announced they had taken power. Bongo was filmed under house arrest asking supporters abroad to make noise on his behalf. He was later released and left for Angola. The coup was welcomed in the streets of Libreville, which is not always true of coups. Oligui Nguema, a cousin of the family who had commanded the guard, was sworn in as transitional president and won an election in 2025. Gabon was suspended from the African Union. The episode belongs to a run of coups across west and central Africa since 2020 that has repeatedly removed governments France had backed.

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