The money came.
Nothing else did.

The scale of what arrived is easy to underestimate. Oil production grew at roughly 26% a year between 2000 and 2005, against an African average near 4.7%. Between 2007 and 2014 Equatorial Guinea was Africa's richest country on a per-capita basis, having previously been one of its poorest, and reached upper-middle-income status. In purchasing-power terms GDP per head hit $19,850 in 2008. For a population under two million, that is one of the largest per-person resource inflows the continent has seen.

Now the descent. By 2022 GDP per capita in the same terms was $7,182 — roughly a third of the peak. Oil output fell from 241,000 barrels a day in 2010 to 55,000 in 2023. The Zafiro field, which peaked around 280,000 barrels a day in 2004, was retired in 2022 two months after water leaked into a production vessel. Hydrocarbons still account for around 42% of GDP, 95% of exports and 90% of public revenue, which means the decline is not a sector problem but a national one. The economy contracted an estimated 6.4% in 2025, and the World Bank projects a further 3.5% contraction across 2026–27. The IMF forecasts average growth of just 0.9% a year through 2030.

And here is the number that defines the brand. After all of that money, poverty stood at 50.7% in 2023. It has fallen — it was 76.8% in 2006 — but half the population of the country that was briefly Africa's richest per head remains poor, with unemployment at 13.3% and a human development index of 0.650. The windfall did not become schools, clinics, an industrial base or a diversified economy at anything like the scale the revenue permitted.

The state's own account of this is unusually candid. In what one assessment describes as a rare moment of frankness, President Obiang acknowledged the country had been on the brink of bankruptcy because of widespread financial mismanagement. Obiang has led the country since 1979 and is among the world's longest-ruling heads of state. In 2024 the post-election cabinet was dissolved and a network of bankers installed in key ministries, in an attempt to reverse what the same assessment calls one of the most prolonged and severe peacetime economic declines of the century — even as public sector employment expanded 6.2% that year.

There is genuine progress worth recording. The IMF completed the third review of a non-financing Staff Monitored Programme in December 2025, with the authorities meeting all quantitative conditionality and three structural benchmarks, and approving a 2026 budget consistent with programme objectives. Bank non-performing loans fell to 31% at end-2023 from 55%. But the Fund is explicit about what the track record hinges on: governance reforms, and specifically the publication of a hydrocarbon sector transparency report. That single document is, right now, the country's most valuable available brand asset, and it has not been published.

Meanwhile the future is being staked on gas — a $690m Chevron deal on Aseng, the revival of Block EG-27 as a $4.5bn Afreximbank-backed venture targeting 2.4 million tonnes of LNG a year over twenty years, and 24 blocks offered from April 2026. The history here counsels caution: the 2019 licensing round fell short, and Fortuna FLNG, once planned as Africa's first deepwater liquefaction terminal, collapsed after more than a decade for lack of financing.

One detail captures the whole audit. In 2026 Ciudad de la Paz was declared the official capital by presidential decree — while the ministries continue to operate from Malabo and Bata. A capital city that exists by announcement, and a government that does not work there.

The task, in brand terms, is to build something the revenue never bought. So model it.