Gabon and Equatorial Guinea signed an agreement on Tuesday formally ending a decades-long dispute over three small islands in the Gulf of Guinea, following a ruling by the International Court of Justice in favour of Equatorial Guinea.
The long-running disagreement centred on the 30-hectare island of Mbanié and the nearby islets of Cocotiers and Conga, located in potentially oil-rich waters. The two West African neighbours had contested sovereignty over the territory since the early 1970s.
In May 2025, the ICJ in The Hague ruled that the islands belonged to Equatorial Guinea. At a ceremony held at African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Equatorial Guinean Foreign Minister Simeón Oyono Esono Angüe and Dieudonné Aba’a Owono, president of Gabon’s Constitutional Council, signed an accord committing both countries to implement the court’s decision.
“This matter has been settled once and for all,” Oyono Esono Angüe said, adding that the two nations must now “move forward.” Aba’a Owono described the agreement as opening “a new era of cooperation with Equatorial Guinea.”
AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, who also signed the document, welcomed the resolution of a dispute he said had lasted far too long.
Historic roots of the dispute
The conflict originated in a 1900 treaty signed in Paris by the colonial powers France and Spain that defined the borders between the two territories. Gabon later argued that a 1974 agreement known as the Bata Convention had transferred sovereignty over the islands to it.
The two countries asked the ICJ to determine which legal instruments were valid. The court found that the Bata Convention did not constitute a binding legal title. Instead, it upheld the title held by Spain, which passed to Equatorial Guinea upon its independence in 1968.
Source:Africanews
