From the article:
"The six-lane highway stretching from Equatorial Guinea’s airport to its multimillion-dollar seaside resort in Sipopo is lined with skyscrapers, a state-of-the-art Israeli-run hospital, and luxury homes surrounded by carefully tended gardens. The 16-mile drive suggests the country’s oil reserves have enriched this tiny 11,000-square-mile West African nation, which has been ruled for almost 40 years by one man, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. State media once compared him to God.
Veer off the route, and the picture that emerges is much less divine. In Fishtown, one of as many as eight shanty communities in the capital, Malabo, hundreds of people live in wooden shacks. Children romp near sewage that flows onto dirt roads strewn with trash. Street vendors sell tomatoes and beans under a mesh of electrical wires that often spark fires. To pass time, unemployed men play Akong, a local board game. Many were idled after Obiang’s building spree ended two years ago. The country has some of the world’s worst social indicators: Less than half of the population of about 1.3 million people has access to clean water, and 20% of children die before reaching the age of 5, United Nations data show. More than half of all children of primary age aren’t in school.
Poverty is in the eyes of the beholder—at least according to Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima, one of the president’s sons and the minister of mines and hydrocarbons. He acknowledges difficulties in tackling what he calls “pockets” of destitution, which he blames on the poor having too many children and not saving enough money. “When our peers from Nigeria and Sudan come to see our slums, they say: ‘This is not poverty. Come to our country to see real poverty.’ ”
His father, the president, rules the country from Malabo, which is set on a volcanic island about 150 miles from the rest of the country on the mainland. Obiang’s rise to power began in Spain—the former colonial ruler of Equatorial Guinea—where he received military training at an elite academy during the 36-year-long dictatorship of Francisco Franco. When the African country became independent in 1968, Francisco Macias Nguema was elected president—and Obiang, his nephew, rose to become head of the national guard. Macias hated intellectuals—he even banned the word “intellectual.” A third of the population was killed by Macias’s security forces or fled during his decade-long rule. Obiang overthrew his uncle in 1979. Macias was put on trial and executed by firing squad.
Until the 1990s, Equatorial Guinea’s main source of revenue was cocoa and coffee. Then oil was discovered. (The country is the smallest member of OPEC.) Since then, Obiang has tightened his grip through a system of patronage that enriches his family and allies. Obiang’s eldest son and vice president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, flaunts his private jet trips and yacht parties on Instagram. “Teodorin” (or little Teodoro) was convicted in absentia by a French court in 2017 for embezzling more than $100 million of Equatoguinean public money to buy a fleet of supercars and a mansion near the Champs-Élysées. He spent more than $300 million from 2004 through 2011 on luxuries, including Michael Jackson memorabilia, U.S. Department of Justice lawyers said in a separate money laundering case settled in 2014. That sum amounted to slightly less than 10% of Equatorial Guinea’s annual oil revenues at the time and, according to a paper published by the Center for Global Development, would have been more than enough to eradicate the country’s poverty. Teodorin hasn’t commented on either case, but his defense appealed the French court ruling, saying he amassed his fortune legally and has immunity as vice president..."