Gabon

Gabon grows little cacao today. Production peaked at roughly 6,000 tonnes in the mid-1970s and has fallen to a couple of hundred tonnes a year, a decline attributed to the alternative economic opportunities of oil and mineral extraction rather than to agronomic collapse.

Woleu-Ntem in the north is the historic centre of Gabonese cocoa, and a government revival initiative targets that province together with Ogooué-Ivindo and Ogooué-Lolo. The material planted now sits largely within the West African gene pool — Amelonado crossed by Upper Amazon selections — although the botanical garden at Libreville historically held 20 to 25 distinct types collected from São Tomé, Cameroon and Trinidad, and pockets of finer distinction persist.