President of the Republic

He was educated in the official school of Mongomo and later by Catholic missionaries. In 1963, he was accepted as a Cadet of the Territorial Guard and later that year into the General Military Academy “Francisco Franco” of Saragosse in Spain.

In August of 1965, he was commissioned as a sub-Lieutenant of the Territorial General of Equatorial Guinea in Miko Messing. Two years later he was transferred to a company in Bata, and a year after that to Malabo. For the next ten years, President Obiang continued to assume positions of increasing leadership in the Armed Forces.

In 1979, after the devastation of a decade under the tyrannical President Macias, then-Lieutenant Colonel Obiang took control of the government and was named President of the Supreme Military Council, which would lead the nation’s transition.

Equato-Guineans voted overwhelmingly for a new constitution on August 15, 1982. The Supreme Military Council was abolished and President Obiang became President of the Republic for an initial seven-year term. He was reelected to additional terms in 1989, 1996 and 2003.

Under President Obiang's Administration, Equatorial Guinea undertook the long, difficult process of recovering from the devastation of the Macias regime. President Obiang, reopened schools, expanded primary education, restored public utilities and roads and put the nation on the path of participatory democracy.

With the discovery of substantial oil and natural gas reserves in the mid- to late-nineties, President Obiang’s government has made significant investments in increasing transparency in its financial practices and diversifying its economy, modernizing its infrastructure, strengthening its public health system, and promoting education to build a strong foundation for the future of the country. The President also made a strategic decision to focus on diversifying the national economy to ensure the successful long-term stabilization of economic opportunity. These efforts are on-going.