Gabon

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Country in a nutshell

Source : http://www.cia.gov

Gabon is a country in west central Africa sharing borders with the Gulf of Guinea to the west, Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, and Cameroon to the north, with the Republic of the Congo curving around the east and south.

Its size is almost 270,000 km² with an estimated population of 1.5 million (July 2011 CIA est.).

The capital and largest city is Libreville. In the early 1990s, Gabon introduced a multi-party system and a new democratic constitution that allowed for a more transparent electoral process and reformed many governmental institutions.

The small population together with abundant natural resources and foreign private investment have helped make Gabon one of the most prosperous countries in the region, with the highest HDI in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Its official language is French.

Education in Country

The 1996 education law states that schooling is both free and compulsory between the ages of six and sixteen. The government acknowledged in 2001 that schooling was only free in principal, and in fact had not been able to implement this as intended.

The education system has been criticised for not meeting the needs of the country. The curriculum aims at entering primary level children to secondary, though the majority do not do so thus creating a partially inadequate workforce of school leavers aged 11. The government has, as of 2006, yet to form a policy to address this.

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