Lambaréné

Gabon

Lambaréné, city, west-central Gabon, located on an island in the Ogooué River at a point where the river is over half a mile wide. It is a trading and lumbering centre with a steamboat landing, an airport, and road connections to Kango, Ndjolé, and Mouila. Lambaréné is best known for its hospital founded in 1913 by Albert Schweitzer, the theologian and mission doctor. There is a small museum devoted to Schweitzer’s life and work. The Paris Mission Society first established a mission there in 1876, and Lambaréné became the headquarters of Protestant missions in the former French Equatorial Africa. The town has a Protestant church and teacher-training school, a Roman Catholic church, a mosque, and a government medical centre and secondary school.

Plantation rubber has been introduced in the area, and petroleum is drilled to the northwest. Lambaréné has a large palm oil factory, and lumber and palm products are sent down the Ogooué to Port-Gentil, 100 miles (160 km) west, for export. Pop. (2003 est.) 9,000.