🇬🇦 The colours of Gabon

Gabon’s flag features green, yellow, and blue in equal horizontal bands. Green stands for the country’s forests and natural resources, yellow marks the Equator and the sun, and blue represents the Atlantic coast. These colours reflect Gabon's geography and economic reliance on its environment.

Where no official value is given, the swatch shows the colour family, not the exact shade.

The colours of the flag of Gabon

The Gabonese flag is made of three horizontal stripes of green, yellow, and blue, all of equal width. Green is said to symbolise the country’s forests and natural resources, which are central to Gabon’s economy, especially through lumber. Yellow is linked to the Equator, which runs through Gabon, and also to the sun. Blue stands for the Atlantic Ocean, reflecting Gabon’s long coastal border. These meanings are described in official and reference sources.

How the colours were chosen of Gabon

Gabon’s flag was first adopted in 1959, when the country gained autonomy from France. The original design included a narrow yellow stripe between green and blue, with the French Tricolour in the top left corner. In August 1960, just before independence, the French flag was removed and the yellow band was widened to match the others. Gabon’s flag stands out among former French colonies for its horizontal tricolour and for not using the Pan-African colours.

Official shades and rules of Gabon

The flag’s proportions are set by law at 3:4, a rare ratio shared by only a few other countries. The three stripes—green, yellow, and blue—must be of equal width. No official shade specifications for the colours are given in the sources.