The Concept of ‘Land’ in Bioko: ‘Land as Property’ and ‘Land as Country’

The island today known as Bioko was named Flor Formosa, ‘Beautiful Flower’, by Fernando Pó when he arrived there in 1472. The Spanish colonial government then gave it the name of the Portuguese navigator and after independence, in 1969, the first president, Francisco Macías Nguema Biyogo, named the island after himself. Teodoro Obiang Nguema changed the name to Bioko, a Bubi royal, after the coup d’état of 1979 in which he succeeded his uncle Francisco Macías to the presidency. The island’s colonial history began with these acts of naming and with the slave trade that followed the arrival of the