Marc Ona Essangui is founder of the environmental NGO Brainforest and president of Environment Gabon, a network of NGOs. Marc Ona Essangui led efforts to expose agreements behind a Chinese mining project in

Gabon Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...

, a country in West

Central Africa Central Africa (French language, French: ''Afrique centrale''; Spanish language, Spanish: ''África central''; Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''África Central'') is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries accordin ...

, that threatened

equatorial rainforest Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forest, is a subtropical and tropical forest habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Description TSMF is generally found in large ...

ecosystems. According to Ona Essangui, the proposed

Belinga Belinga is a location in Gabon with as yet unexploited iron ore deposits. These ore deposits extend into neighbouring Cameroon and Congo. Mining The Belinga iron reserves were discovered in 1895.Douglas A. Yates, "Gabon", in ''Africa Yearbook: ...

development, a $3.5 billion project, was secretly negotiated. Local communities were not consulted and are unaware of the effect that the project would have on their environment. Ona won the 2009 Africa

Goldman Environmental Prize The Goldman Environmental Prize is a prize awarded annually to grassroots environmental activists. History Awardees are named from each of the world's six geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, an ...

for his work. The project is currently on hold due to a lack of financing. In March 2013, Ona Essangui was sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence and an approximately $10,000 USD fine for defamation of Liban Soleman, senior advisor to President

Ali Bongo Ondimba Ali Bongo Ondimba (born Alain-Bernard Bongo; 9 February 1959) also known as Ali Ben Bongo is a Gabonese former politician and dictator who was the third president of Gabon from 2009 until he was deposed in a 2023 Gabonese coup d'état, coup in 2 ...

. From January 2020 to July 2023, Marc Ona Essangui was the president of Tournons La Page movement for democracy i
Africa

References

Gabonese environmentalists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Goldman Environmental Prize awardees 21st-century Gabonese people {{environmentalist-stub