Ngounié

Ngounié covers 37,750 km², about 14.1% of the national territory. It takes its name from the Ngounié river, which crosses it. Forest covers about 93% of its area; a strip of savannah runs from about 40 km north of Mouila to the border with the Republic of the Congo. In the east, the Chaillu massif rises to just over 1,000 metres.

The 2013 general population and housing census (RGPL) counted 100,838 inhabitants, or 2.7 people per km². The 2026 census results, validated by the Constitutional Court on 27 August 2026, report 159,404 inhabitants. These national results are well above United Nations and World Bank estimates and have been debated in the Gabonese press.

The province has nine departments. The most populous in 2013 were Douya-Onoye (Mouila, 37,699 inhabitants), Tsamba-Magotsi (Fougamou, 14,875) and Boumi-Louetsi (Mbigou, 13,223). The other department capitals are Lébamba, Mimongo, Ndendé, Mandji, Malinga and Guiétsou.

Oil palm and agriculture

Olam Palm Gabon, a joint venture owned 60% by the Olam group and 40% by the Gabonese State, runs four oil palm plantations in the country, two of them in Ngounié: Mouila, established in 2011, and Ndendé, established in 2016. In 2012 the company stated that the Mouila site covered a total area of 42,500 hectares. An extension (Mouila lot 2) in the Tsamba-Magotsi and Ndolou departments went to public consultation in 2013. According to Olam, all its palm concessions in Gabon have been certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) since 2022.

The province also hosted the GRAINE agricultural programme (Gabonaise des réalisations agricoles et des initiatives des nationaux engagés), launched in late 2014 and run by the Gabonese agricultural processing and rural development company (SOTRADER), a partnership between the State (51%) and Olam (49%). In November 2015, 43 farming cooperatives received approvals in Ndendé.

Gold

Moroccan mining group Managem is developing the Etéké gold project, about 420 km from Libreville. It has held a 1,408 km² exploration permit there since 2007 and obtained a mining licence in April 2022. Managem reports probable reserves of 452,000 ounces of gold across three open-pit deposits, an estimated investment of 138 million dollars and a target of commercial production in the fourth quarter of 2028.

Mouila, on the Ngounié river, is served by the N1 national road and has an airfield.

The Impératrice Eugénie falls hydropower project is on the Ngounié river, about 5 km from Fougamou. Planned for decades and stalled for several years, it was relaunched in 2022: in March the State, the renewable energy development company CODER and the Chinese firm China Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC) reached an agreement to resume construction, and in August the Council of Ministers approved the contracts. The plant is meant to supply the Fougamou, Lambaréné, Libreville corridor. The developer describes a first phase of 120 megawatts (MW), expandable to 168 MW, and indicated provisional commissioning in the second half of 2025; the sources consulted do not confirm the current state of construction.

Two of the thirteen national parks created in 2002 are in Ngounié:

• Waka National Park (about 1,061 km²), in the Chaillu massif, entirely within the province.
• Birougou National Park (about 683 km²), shared with Ogooué-Lolo. Named after Mount Birougou (975 m), it includes wetlands designated as a Ramsar site and has been on UNESCO's World Heritage tentative list since 2005.

The parks are managed by the national parks agency (ANPN).