Forest Capital

During our visit to the Wynn School in Tewkesbury, our Wrangler Mr. Kevin told us about a country that will open its new capital in the same year that the Wynn students will be graduating high school in 2022.

The West African country of Equatorial Guinea is currently one of very few countries whose capital is on an island that is separate most of its mainland territory on a continent (Denmark is another good example).

In the case of Equatorial Guinea, this arrangement has proven difficult to maintain, so the government has embarked on a project to move its capital to a mainland location that will be known as Oyala. It is fitting that the United States is helping to fund this move, since we moved our own national capital a couple of times before the construction of Washington, D.C.

Read more about the challenges facing Equatorial Guinea and the reasons for this relocation on the BBC web site. The Monga Bay web site describes concerns about the 8,000 hectares of rain forest that would be cleared for construction.

This planner's rendering of the future capital Oyala resembles the
PacMan video game, but it is a serious
plan for settling 200,000 residents in the new city.