Estuaire

Estuaire covers 20,740 km². The province has seven communes: Libreville, Owendo, Akanda, Ntoum, Cocobeach, Kango and Ndzomoe. Its departments are Komo (seat Kango), Komo-Mondah (Ntoum), Komo-Océan (Ndzomoe) and Noya (Cocobeach), in addition to the communes of Libreville and Owendo.

Libreville, the national capital, is commonly treated as the provincial seat, although no seat had been formally designated since independence. According to Gabonreview, on 14 April 2022 the Council of Ministers adopted a bill setting the seats of provinces and departments, which names Akanda, a commune created in 2013 north of Libreville, as the seat of Estuaire. The enactment of this bill could not be confirmed in an official source, so this profile shows Libreville.

At the 2013 census, the province had 895,689 inhabitants (43.2 per km²), of whom 703,940 lived in the commune of Libreville, 90,096 in Komo-Mondah and 79,300 in Owendo. The 2026 census results, validated by the Constitutional Court on 27 August 2026, give 2,184,908 inhabitants out of a national total of 3,518,621. These figures are well above World Bank and United Nations estimates, and their scale has been debated in the Gabonese press.

Libreville concentrates most of the country's administrative functions, jobs and commercial activity, an imbalance highlighted by the press when the 2026 census results were published. The province's main industrial hub is the Nkok special economic zone, located in the Komo-Mondah department near Ntoum, 27 km from Libreville.

Launched in 2010, the Nkok SEZ is run by Gabon Special Economic Zone (GSEZ), a public-private partnership between Arise Integrated Industrial Platforms (Arise IIP) and the Republic of Gabon. According to the operator, it covers 1,126 hectares, of which 600 are developed, and hosts 144 companies from 17 countries across 22 industrial sectors. Wood processing is central: GSEZ reports that one million cubic metres of timber were processed there in 2022. Companies located in the zone fall under a specific tax and customs regime, whose terms should be checked with the operator.

The port of Owendo and the terminus of the Trans-Gabon railway also make the province the transit point for Comilog's manganese exports, mined at Moanda, and for part of the timber exports.

Port of Owendo

Located south of Libreville, the port of Owendo is overseen by the Gabon ports authority (Office des ports et rades du Gabon, OPRAG). It includes several terminals: a commercial port, a container terminal, a petroleum terminal, the mineral terminal of Compagnie minière de l'Ogooué (Comilog) opened in 1988, the GSEZ mineral terminal opened in 2016, the New Owendo International Port (NOIP) multipurpose port opened in 2017 and a dedicated timber port area. OPRAG reports a combined quay length of 1,405 metres across seven berths.

Airport

Léon-Mba international airport in Libreville has a 3,000-metre runway and a 16,000 m² terminal completed in 1991, designed for about 1.2 million passengers a year. A new airport is planned at Andem: on 4 July 2025, a 290 million euro financing was signed with Afreximbank, BGFIBank Gabon and AFG Bank Cameroun, for an announced capacity of 2 million passengers a year.

Rail and roads

The Trans-Gabon railway, operated by Société d'exploitation du Transgabonais (Setrag), starts at Owendo and serves Ntoum (km 35) among other stations before reaching Franceville. National road 1 (N1) starts in Libreville and runs through Ntoum and Kango towards Lambaréné; its first dual carriageway section opened in September 2018.

Energy

The Mbei river, a tributary of the Komo, hosts the Kinguélé (58 MW) and Tchimbélé (69 MW) hydroelectric plants. Downstream, the Kinguélé Aval dam (35 MW), about 100 km east of Libreville on the edge of Monts de Cristal national park, is expected to generate 205 GWh a year, which its sponsors put at about 13% of Libreville's electricity needs. It is carried by Asonha Energie, owned 60% by Meridiam and 40% by Gabon Power Company (GPC), a subsidiary of the Gabonese strategic investment fund (FGIS), under a 30-year concession. In August 2025, works were more than 54% complete and commissioning was announced for the end of 2026.

Two of the thirteen national parks created in 2002 lie on Libreville's doorstep. Akanda national park (540 km²), north of the city, consists mainly of mangroves and tidal flats; it is known for migratory birds and has been a Ramsar wetland since 2007. Pongara national park (929 km²), on the southern shore of the estuary opposite Libreville, combines forest, mangroves and beaches where leatherback turtles, among others, nest; it has also been a Ramsar site since 2007. Together, the two parks hold about a quarter of the protected mangroves of the African continent.

The province also includes part of the Wonga-Wongué reserve, created in 1972 and shared with Ogooué-Maritime, which the transitional authorities decided to open to the public in 2024.