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The Witch Doctor President and Other Horrific Rulers

Khalid Elhassan December 25, 2019 32 min

37. Driving the Country Into the Ground

Francisco Macias Nguema on his country’s currency in 1969. Pintrest

When Nguema was elected in 1968, Equatorial Guinea had a population of about 350,000. By the time his rule came to an end in 1979, over half had been killed or had fled into exile to escape the insanity of his rule. He began in 1969 by forcing the country’s entire Spanish population to leave and to leave their assets behind.

On the one hand, the Spaniards were a reminder of the hated colonial rule, and their accumulated wealth had been forcibly and unfairly robbed from the natives during colonialism. On the other hand, the Spanish settlers included a majority of the professionals, technocrats, and experienced civil servants necessary for the smooth functioning of the former colony’s economy and government. Both the economy and government took a nose dive. Nguema eventually responded by abolishing the currency, reducing the country to a barter economy.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.