Ndjolé is the capital town in the

Abanga-Bigne Department Abanga-Bigne is a department of Moyen-Ogooué Province in west-central Gabon. The capital is Ndjolé. The N2 Road links Bifoun from the west to Ndjolé in the east, crossing the Abanga River not far from Ndjolé. Transportation from Libreville ...

in Gabon, lying northeast of Lambaréné on the Ogooué River, the

N2 road This is a list of roads designated N2. Roads entries are sorted in alphabetical order by country. * N2 (Bangladesh), connects Dhaka and Tamabil via Sylhet * N2 road (Belgium), connects Brussels and Maastricht * National Road 2 (Democratic Repub ...

and the Trans-Gabon Railway. It is known as a base for

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. Logging is the beginning of a supply chain ...

and as a transport hub. Ndjolé is the last city that can be reached by barge traffic traveling up the Ogooué River. Above Ndjolé there are

rapids Rapids are sections of a river where the river bed has a relatively steep gradient, causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. Rapids are hydrological features between a ''run'' (a smoothly flowing part of a stream) and a ''cascade''. ...

on the river.

History

In 1883, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza founded the military post of Ndjolé, a strategic point located on the Ogooué River. The river being difficult to navigate upstream, it is here that foresters loaded their wood to bring it down to Port-Gentil. The N'djolé prison, built in 1898 on an island on the Ogooué, opposite Ndjolé, was part of a French policy to build detention centres in the French overseas departments and territories then in the colonies. It was here that

Samory Touré Samory Toure ( – June 2, 1900), also known as Samori Toure, Samory Touré, or Almamy Samore Lafiya Toure, was a Muslim cleric, a military strategist, and the founder and leader of the Wassoulou Empire, an Islamic empire that was in present-day ...

, founder and leader of the short-lived Wassoulou Empire, died in captivity. Alongside Samory Touré,

Cheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacké Sheikh (pronounced or ; ar, شيخ ' , mostly pronounced , plural ' )—also transliterated sheekh, sheyikh, shaykh, shayk, shekh, shaik and Shaikh, shak—is an honorific title in the Arabic language. It commonly designates a chief o ...

also experienced exile and forced labour there.

History

Further reading