Monthly Blog- February 2025

James Whitmee

I am in Malabo on Bioko Island in Equatorial Guinea. This is an unusual country, being one of Africa’s few upper-middle-income countries due to its large oil and gas deposits, I am here looking for office space for an international corporate.

There is a very limited supply of offices to lease, and few speculatively built office buildings. Currently there appears to be an imbalance and very low vacancy. Whilst there is no official data, vacancy is probably at less than 5%.

The market is slow moving. As an example there is a very large office development (Malabo Gate) being constructed at the western end of Malabo II which has so far taken around ten years to build and which is a long way off completion (in fact construction appears to have stopped).

Major projects in this market are mostly State initiated, notably the Sipopo luxury resort development and the Malabo II urban corridor.

Most companies that are long-established in this market have been allocated land and required to build.

Apart from those buildings which have been developed by foreign companies, quality is generally poor which no “green” features and deficiencies in terms of health and safety features, disabled access etc.

Security is surprisingly light – I have seen no buildings with screening, turnstiles, enhanced security features, etc. Practices and provisions are flimsy across the entire market.

This is a landlord-controlled market with many landlords being connected with the Government.

Rents are generally in the range of the equivalent of EUR 12-15 /sq m /month for Grade B+ space but there is little transparency and some rents quoted are much lower or much higher.