Ndjolé
human settlement
Ndjolé is the capital town in the Abanga-Bigne Department in Gabon, lying northeast of Lambaréné on the Ogooué River, the N2 road and the Trans-Gabon Railway. It is known as a base for logging and as a transport hub. Ndjolé is the last city that can be reached by barge traffic traveling up the Ogooué River. Above Ndjolé there are rapids on the river.
History
In 1883, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza founded the military post of Ndjolé, a strategic point located on the Ogooué River.
The river being difficult to navigate upstream, it is here that foresters loaded their wood to bring it down to Port-Gentil.
The N'djolé prison, built in 1898 on an island on the Ogooué, opposite Ndjolé, was part of a French policy to build detention centres in the French overseas departments and territories then in the colonies. It was here that Samory Touré, founder and leader of the short-lived Wassoulou Empire, died in captivity. Alongside Samory Touré, Cheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacké also experienced exile and forced labour there.
Further reading
Petringa, Maria.
“Ndjolé” enters the record as human settlement. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ndjolé, human and settlement can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1316415. VIAF identifies the subject as 145538478. The Library of Congress control number is n89123013. Authority coordinates are -0.183, 10.750. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1883 and 1898.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ndjolé” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.