Trans-Gabon Railway

The Trans-Gabon Railway (French: Transgabonais) is the only railway in Gabon. It runs some 648 km (about 670 km including yards and branches) eastward from the port of Owendo, on the outskirts of the capital Libreville, to Franceville in the south-east of the country, serving 23 intermediate stations, the most important of which are Ndjolé, Lopé, Booué, Lastoursville and Moanda. It is built to standard gauge (1,435 mm) as a single, unelectrified track and is operated with diesel locomotives.

Conceived as a linchpin of Omar Bongo's post-independence modernisation drive, the line was financed largely from Gabon's 1970s oil windfall, supplemented by French, West German and later British and Italian capital after the World Bank declined to fund the project on economic grounds. Construction began in October 1974; the first section, Owendo–Ndjolé, was opened in 1978, and the line reached Franceville on 30 December 1986. The cost of roughly US$1.65 billion substantially exceeded early estimates and strained Gabonese public finances for more than a decade.

The railway is operated under a long-term concession by the Société d'Exploitation du Transgabonais (SETRAG), a subsidiary of the manganese producer Compagnie minière de l'Ogooué (COMILOG), which is itself majority-owned by the French mining and metallurgical group Eramet. Manganese ore shipped from the Moanda mine to Owendo for export accounts for the overwhelming majority of freight traffic; the line also moves okoumé and other tropical timber, uranium ore concentrates from the former Mounana mine area, general freight and, under a public-service obligation, passengers. In 2022 the line carried approximately 248,000 passengers and 10.9 million tonnes of freight.

Background

A railway crossing Gabon was first mooted during the colonial period, with proposals advanced as early as 1885 and periodically revived during French Equatorial African rule.