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He died about ten years ago, but the inhabitants of Franceville, in southeastern Gabon, come back with a deep nostalgia for the regime of former President Omar Bongo.
His hour of glory was a period of oil wealth and seemingly endless optimism. But the dollar river has dried up and has been replaced by a tightening of the belt, demanding from the IMF.
"We miss him, it 's thanks to him that we also have roads, hospitals and the university," said Rebecca, a high school student who was only eight when she was in school. The man she called "Papa Bongo" has succumbed to cancer.
Rebecca and a friend took selfies on a smartphone in front of an imposing statue of Bongo, who led the former French colony for 42 years – "a father for all of us", as she says so well.
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"When he was there, there was no money problem," said his girlfriend, Jessica, 18, at the foot of the statue, a popular place for young people to chat. , dance, play and flirt.
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Franceville is the capital of the Haut-Ogooué region where Bongo was born in 1935 and where he was buried.
It houses a sumptuous Moroccan-style mausoleum built on the orders of Bongo's son and successor, Ali Bongo, who will be commemorated on Saturday for the 10th anniversary of the death of the strongman.
The vast tomb is surrounded by fountains and palm trees, decorated with mosaic tiles and fitted with marble staircases and gilded doors – at the opposite of Benguia District II located on the other side of the hill, populated by woods and huts made of corrugated iron.
During his reign, Omar Bongo Ondimba sought to turn the small, densely wooded nation from just under two million inhabitants into an "oil emirate", while the black gold was flowing rapidly and freely.
And although the Bongo regime has been criticized for its corruption and its inability to redistribute wealth adequately, some benefits have been lost.
"It was Omar who installed the water pump and built the village school," said Edouard Ngouendji, a resident of Benguia II, a district that has never known electricity.
– "Missed more each day" –
"We are all voting for the CEO," he added.
But since Bongo's son, Ali, took over, oil prices collapsed and Gabon plunged into an economic slump that nurtured the aspirations of better days under the president's father.
According to the World Bank, the oil sector has provided 80% of exports, 45% of gross domestic product and 60% of tax revenues on average in recent years.
The collapse of oil is impacting today – a barrel of Brent costs about $ 60 today, 50% less than in 2014.
Gabon's GDP per capita rose from $ 548 in 1970 to $ 5,869 in 1980 and $ 10,716 in 2011, before dropping to $ 7,220 last year, according to the World Bank.
In 2017, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed on a financial badistance plan for the troubled country, subject to reduced public spending.
Unemployment is on the rise, recruitment is frozen in some sectors and many Gabonese face delays in paying their salaries or pensions.
"My father is missing every day more, because the economic crisis is hitting households harder," said AFP Anicet Bongo Ondimba, one of the 54 recognized children of the late president.
Anger in the hard times even reached Franceville, a fortress of the CEO.
Earlier this year, schoolchildren gathered at the statue's feet, joining national demonstrations against the reduction of university grants.
"We were looking at the statue, we figured that under Papa Bongo, they would not cut the subsidies," Rebecca said.
On Saturday, residents of Franceville will participate in a commemorative ceremony at the Bongo Mausoleum.
Preparations are well underway with teams of gardeners mowing the lawns while the cleaners clean floors and brbad and make sure the windows are shining.
But everyone in Franceville is not in grateful mood.
In Benguia II, where people voted for the CEO as long as they remember, Franklin Ngoulou stands out with a t-shirt wearing the colors of the opposition.
"Ali has promised us to work and to stay, but just look where we live!", He said. "In the village, I am the only one to have gone from the other side."
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