A modern country with strong traditions
The history of the peoples of Gabon is a recent one, ingesting and digesting a multitude of cultural determinants through demographic intermixing and the opening up of communication networks, and all this in record time on the scale of history. Gabon's traditional ways of life are marked by adaptation to a harsh natural environment dominated by two founding elements: the forest and the river. This remains true until recent, more modern times, when various communication routes have altered this dynamic. Village practices and daily life, like its philosophy, are imbued with a rich and complex spirituality, and, in any case, far removed from that of the West. The symbolic representation of beliefs can be seen in animist art, reflecting the diverse and meaningful ethnic rites. Everyday lifestyles, whether in terms of relationships, organization or production, are imbued with spirituality and thus intimately linked to ancestral cults from which they cannot be dissociated. Contemporary urban life, whose dynamics and lifestyles are not always in harmony with tradition, is taking precedence over this ancestral philosophy. The majority of the population, especially young people, live in the city, rub shoulders with communities of diverse origins, and are comfortable with the consumer society inherited from the West. Nevertheless, certain habits and customs endure and are visible in dress codes, ways of relating, hierarchical systems both within the family and in professional and political life. Identity evolves, but always draws on the cultural roots of a people's history. Even in Libreville, ancestral rites remain remarkably alive, and continue to cohabit with the rules of urban life, sometimes creating surprising paradoxes.
Ethnic groups divided into lineages
Despite the existence of some fifty distinct ethnic groups, Gabon's populations share a similar social form based on the notions of clan and lineage, but also of religious brotherhood and village led by a chief, a man of recognized experience and knowledge. Community organization in Gabon is built around the genetic ancestor, the lineage chief, who is the starting point for community solidarity, internal political unity and external relations within the group. The group may be patrilineal or matrilineal. In the latter case, the woman who marries confers filiation on her children. Different ethnic groups may thus share common lineages. Even today, a number of ceremonies bring relatives of the same lineage together for a particular event: initiation rites, customary marriages, funerals and mourning ceremonies. In economic terms, the lineage structures the community's production in the same way as a cooperative, with rules for participation and distribution of production. It also manages the rules linked to the ecosystem and the collective prohibitions of the lineage: "totemic rites". The encounter with Europeans considerably altered the socio-cultural logic and introduced Western religions, forcefully, against or alongside ancestral animist cults. The new laws of commerce, not least the slave trade, introduced a new concept of profitability, inherent to capitalism, in contradiction with the original system of community values, representation of the world and production, and thus exacerbated the tendency towards individualism.
The social organization of habitats
Land management is also governed by the rules of lineage. The low population density of this immense country means that land can be chosen for building, farming, hunting and fishing. Villages were relocated according to the "fallow" production principle. The huts were built from natural local materials (wood, bamboo, palm), and their precariousness was explained by the temporary nature of the settlement. In the center of the village, the first building, the communal guardhouse, served as a courtyard. It was at once a place for festivities, a school, a place for the transmission of knowledge and a place for storytellers. Around the guardhouse, each head of household was given a plot of land, which he organized with his close relatives, wives and children. In the center of this square or rectangular plot, a guardhouse was surrounded by two rows of huts: the men occupied the front of the huts, which faced each other, while the rear was reserved for the women. Even further back was the animal enclosure and, on the outskirts of the villages, a "liseraine" zone was set up to supply the village with medicinal plants and essential foodstuffs, and to maintain a manure zone necessary for soil regeneration. The reorganization that followed the colonial administration destroyed the principles of traditional production cycles and the resulting ecological balance, by making the villages part of a definitive structure. In addition, roads whose axes run through village centers have taken the place of traditional courtyards, thus modifying the function of village space. Unlike the habitats described above, Pygmy settlements are made up of wooden structures covered exclusively with abundant foliage. The camp's lifespan depends on the collection of plant products and hunting, which determines the itinerant nature of this type of population.
The education system in Gabon
Modelled on the laws of the former colonial power, the education system includes compulsory schooling for children aged between 6 and 16 in its basic texts. As in France, there are four levels of education: pre-school, primary, secondary and higher. However, free schooling only applies to the primary and secondary cycles. In 2020, Gabon had one of the best school enrolment rates in Africa, with 83.3% of children attending school, but a year later, this rate had dropped to 70%, pointing to flaws in the Gabonese education system. Several indicators point to the failure of the system: high drop-out and repetition rates are recorded at primary level. What's more, numerous strikes paralyze the education sector - the most recent of which, in 2013-2014, lasted almost 80 days - and call into question the quality of teaching today. Overcrowded class sizes ranging from 30 to 130 in primary schools, inefficient decentralization, which often results in the absence of village-appointed teachers, rudimentary material conditions and particularly low salaries for the teaching profession are the main causes of this failure, whatever the level.
The place of women in society
Gabonese women are not on the sidelines of the common struggle being waged around the world. They reflect the conflicting in-between roles of tradition and modernity. Representing 49.1% of the population in 2020, women have acquired a certain visibility in the political arena (15% in 2014). Many women have become ministers, including Rose Christiane Ossouka Raponda, who was the first female Prime Minister from 2020 to 2023. However, these exceptional cases do not reveal a radical change in their day-to-day responsibilities and consideration. They are totally absent from the landscape of heads of large companies or provincial governorates, and preconceptions about the professional functions attributed to women are still very much in evidence. Despite official documents advocating equality and the rejection of all forms of discrimination against women, even though women are increasingly present in positions of responsibility in the city, they still return to the home, or even worse, to the village, where they are bound by the laws of tradition, which confer on them the role of mother in the home above all else. On a cultural level, tradition and customs in all ethnic groups accord a pre-eminent status to men, and despite compulsory schooling for all genders, the school enrolment rate for girls drops sharply from primary school entry (100%) to secondary school graduation (40%), to just 3% in higher education. One of the main reasons for this state of affairs is the burden of household chores, which naturally fall to girls in the home. In this logic, the other option for social success becomes marriage as a means of financial security. But the lure of comfort and a more affluent lifestyle, combined with poverty, can lead to a tendency among young girls in town to seek out sexual partners with generous wallets. As for customary marriage laws, they remain linked more to conception than to love. In the event of the husband's death, the wife still reverts to the deceased's brother, like a chattel, and tradition still too often deprives widows of all their possessions. Numerous battles are being waged by "women leaders", artists, association presidents and elected politicians, in an attempt to make women aware of their value, their skills and the diversification of roles that is essential to their development in the global economy. Gabon took a further step towards gender equality by amending its Civil Code in 2021, giving more autonomy and responsibility to Gabonese women.
