French Guiana

• 1. Introduction

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  French Guiana, known as Guyane in French, is 98.9 percent forest, and much of that forest is primeval rainforest. Yet it is an overseas department and region of France, and its currency is the euro. It sits on the northern coast of South America, with Suriname to the west and Brazil to the east and south. As of January 2026, 298,554 people live there. It is the only territory on the continental mainland of the Americas that remains under the sovereignty of a European state.

  That single fact raises questions. Why does France still hold a stretch of Amazonian forest, when the two larger neighbours to the west are countries of their own? What did France do with this land, and what did it cost the people who were sent here or came here by choice? And what does daily life look like in a place where a spaceport, illegal gold miners and a carnival all share the same map?

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• 2. Land of Many Waters

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  The word Guyana, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is an indigenous term meaning land of many waters. The meaning suits a coast that colonial powers once carved into five pieces. From west to east they were Spanish Guiana, British Guiana, Dutch Guiana, French Guiana and Portuguese Guiana. Today those names point to the Guayana Region of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and Amapá in Brazil. Colonial habit is why most languages other than French add the adjective French. French Guiana, Guyana and Suriname are still often grouped as the Guianas, and together they form one landmass called the Guiana Shield.

  French Guiana lies between latitudes 2 and 6 degrees north and between longitudes 51 and 55 degrees west. Its total area of 84,000 square kilometres is about one-seventh the size of European France. That makes it the second-largest region of France and the largest outermost region of the European Union. Only 3.6 people live on each square kilometre.

  Two landscapes divide the territory. A coastal strip holds most of the population. Inland, dense and nearly inaccessible rainforest slowly climbs to the modest Tumuc-Humac mountains along the Brazilian frontier. The highest peak is Bellevue de l'Inini in Maripasoula, at 851 metres. Mont Itoupé reaches 826 metres and Cottica Mountain 744. Many rivers cross the land, including the Waki River. In the north, the Petit-Saut Dam holds back an artificial lake and provides hydroelectricity.

  Rain sets the rhythm of the year. Sitting within six degrees of the Equator and rising only to modest heights, French Guiana stays hot and humid in every season. From December to July, most places typically receive more than 330 millimetres of rain each month, driven by the Intertropical Convergence Zone and its powerful thunderstorm cells. Between August and November the eastern half turns warm and dry, with rainfall below 100 millimetres and highs above 30 degrees Celsius in September and October. That dry spell gives the east a tropical monsoon climate. Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in the west keeps a tropical rainforest climate.

  Several small islands lie offshore. The Îles du Connétable, far along the coast toward Brazil, form a bird sanctuary. The three Salvation Islands include Devil's Island, which once held a prison facility.

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• 3. Forest, Soil, and Turtles

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  Researchers have recorded 5,500 plant species in French Guiana, including more than a thousand trees. The count also includes 700 species of birds, 177 species of mammals and 109 species of amphibians. Among more than 500 species of fish, 45 percent are endemic. This richness resembles that of other tropical rainforest regions such as the Brazilian Amazon, Borneo and Sumatra.

  Old-growth forest is the reason. Ancient primary forests are biodiversity hotspots, and these ones sheltered many species during dry periods and terrestrial glaciation. The territory also holds coastal mangroves, savannahs, inselbergs and many types of wetland. It spans three ecoregions: Guayanan Highlands moist forests, Guianan moist forests and Guianan mangroves.

  The Guiana Amazonian Park is the largest national park in the European Union. It covers 41 percent of the territory, some 33,900 square kilometres across the communes of Camopi, Maripasoula, Papaïchton, Saint-Élie and Saül. Seven additional nature reserves and 17 protected sites add to that. On the beaches of the Amana Nature Reserve, marine turtles nest in large numbers. The site is documented as one of the largest leatherback turtle nesting areas in the world.

  On the 28th of July 2005, an ordinance modified the Forest Code of French Guiana. Logging concessions or free transfers are sometimes granted to people who traditionally live from the forest. Logging itself stays moderate, because roads are scarce and the climate and terrain are difficult. The listed threats are different. They include habitat fragmentation from roads, the effects of EDF's Petit-Saut Dam, gold mining, poor control of hunting and poaching made easier by the many new tracks, and the arrival of all-terrain vehicles.

  Beneath the forest lie some of the poorest soils in the world. They are low in nitrogen, potassium and organic matter, and so acidic that farmers must add lime. Slash and burn agriculture followed, because the ashes lower acidity and add minerals. Yet near the border with Brazil, sites of terra preta, a dark anthropogenic soil, have been discovered. Research is under way into how people once created these enriched soils, and whether it can be done again today.

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• 4. Chains and Butterflies

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  The Kalina, Lokono, Galibi, Palikur, Teko, Wayampi and Wayana were the Indigenous peoples living here before European colonists arrived. France tried to plant a colony in the 16th century, alongside its settlements on Caribbean islands such as Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue. A first French establishment is recorded in 1503. No durable presence took hold until colonists founded Cayenne in 1643.

  A toll of 10,000 lives marks the colonists' attempt of 1763. Bill Marshall, a professor of comparative cultural studies at the University of Stirling, wrote that tropical disease and climate killed all but 2,000 of the initial 12,000 settlers.

  Planters, meanwhile, built a slave society. They trafficked Africans to work on large sugar and other plantations. In February 1794 the National Convention voted to abolish the slave trade and slavery in France's overseas colonies, months after enslaved Haitians began their rebellion in Saint-Domingue. The decree was put into effect only in Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe and French Guiana. Senegal, Mauritius, Réunion, Martinique and French India resisted it.

  From 1852 to 1953, France ran a penal system known as Devil's Island. Only a small prison facility stood on that island itself. The system also included prisons on three islands and three larger prisons on the mainland. Marshall wrote that France transported about 56,000 prisoners and that fewer than 10 percent survived their sentences. In the late 19th century, France began forcing prisoners who survived their hard labour to remain as residents.

  Some convicts spent their time chasing butterflies. Officials sometimes put them to the task. Sentences were long and the prospect of employment was very weak, so convicts caught butterflies to sell on the international market, for science and for collectors.

  Convicts also laid railway lines to link the camps. One ran from Montsinéry-Tonnegrande to the so-called bagne des Annamites. Another connected Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, Mana and Saint-Jean-du-Maroni. A third ran from Saint-Élie to the Saut du Tigre labour camp, which now lies under the artificial lake. Most of what remains is disused and swallowed by jungle. In 2025, the French Ministry of Justice announced plans to build a new prison in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.

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• 5. Contested Ground

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  In 1809, a Portuguese-British naval squadron took French Guiana for the Portuguese Empire. The Treaty of Paris returned it to France in 1814. Portugal nonetheless kept a military presence until 1817.

  Later in the 19th century, a dispute with Brazil over a vast area of jungle produced Counani, a short-lived, pro-French, independent state. There was some fighting among settlers. The Swiss government arbitrated and ruled largely in favour of Brazil.

  The territory of Inini was created in 1930 and took in most of the interior. In 1936, Félix Éboué, born in Cayenne, became the first black man to serve as governor in a French colony. During World War II, after the fall of France to German forces, French Guiana fell under Vichy France. It officially rallied to Free France on the 16th of March 1943. On the 19th of March 1946, the Law on Departmentalization made it a French department again.

  In 1996, high school students started an independence movement. In 1997, twelve independence leaders were deported to Guadeloupe. One of them, Jean-Victor Castor, was elected to the French National Assembly in 2022.

  In 2010, the Guianese General Council officially adopted a departmental flag. In a referendum that year, almost 70 percent of voters rejected becoming an autonomous overseas collectivity. A second referendum approved a single territorial collectivity under Article 73 of the Constitution. Since December 2015, the French Guiana Assembly has replaced the former regional and departmental councils, and its president is Gabriel Serville. Talk continues of a greater autonomy called sui generis, similar to Corsica.

  The president of France appoints a prefect who lives in Cayenne. French Guiana sends two deputies and two senators to Paris. One deputy's constituency is the largest in the French Republic by land area. Marie-Laure Phinéra-Horth became the first woman elected to the Senate from French Guiana, in 2020. The Guianese Socialist Party dominated politics until 2010.

  On the 20th of March 2017, workers began striking and demonstrating for more resources and infrastructure. The 28th of March 2017 brought the largest demonstration ever held in French Guiana.

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• 6. Road to Space

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  In 1964, President Charles de Gaulle decided to build a space base in French Guiana. France had lost its Sahara base in Algeria after that country's independence in 1962. The new site had two advantages. It lies near the equator, and its long ocean frontage offers a buffer zone. The base was also meant to stimulate economic growth.

  The Guiana Space Centre sits a short distance along the coast from Kourou. It began with Véronique rockets and has grown considerably. It is now the European Space Agency's primary launch site near the equator. Commercial successes include the Ariane 4 and Ariane 5, and Ariane flight VA256 carried the James Webb Space Telescope into space. In 2025, a new Ariane 6 rocket launched successfully from Kourou, giving Europe independent access to space.

  The centre's weight in the economy has been large. It accounted directly and indirectly for 16 percent of GDP in 2002, down from 26 percent in 1994, as other activity grew. It employed 1,659 people in 2012. A detachment of the Paris Fire Brigade stays in Kourou to protect it. The Colibri and Toucan ships dock at Pariacabo in Kourou to carry Ariane components. The stretch of the N1 road between Kourou and Sinnamary is locally called Route de l'espace, meaning Space Road.

  Growth ran strong from the 1960s to the 2000s. Real GDP rose an average of 3.4 percent per year from 2002 to 2012, and the 2008 financial crisis left the economy unscathed. From 2013 to 2019, growth averaged only 1.2 percent. A recession of 0.8 percent hit in 2014, and the unrest of 2017 left almost no growth that year. In 2019 GDP was US$4.93 billion, and GDP per capita was US$17,375, or 42.3 percent of the metropolitan French average. Unemployment fell from 23.0 percent in 2016 to 19.3 percent in 2019.

  Sugar and bananas were once the main export crops and have almost disappeared. Rice grown on polders near Mana thrived from the early 1980s to the late 2000s. Since 2011, marine erosion and new EU plant health rules have almost ended it. Beef cattle, pigs and market gardening now serve the local market. In 2012, gold mining accounted for 32 percent of exports, far ahead of fishing at 5 percent and timber at 1 percent.

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• 7. Gold and Borders

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  On the 12th of March 2010, a team of French soldiers and border police was attacked while returning from a successful operation against illegal gold miners. The soldiers had arrested 15 miners, confiscated three boats and seized 617 grams of gold, worth about $22,317. Brazilian miners known as garimpeiros returned to recover their lost gold and colleagues. The soldiers fired warning shots and rubber flash balls, but the miners retook one boat and about 500 grams of gold. Philippe Duporge, director of the border police, explained the fierce reaction by the exceptional size of the seizure, about 20 percent of what was taken in all of 2009.

  The French government launched a series of operations against illegal mining. Operation Anaconda began in 2003, followed by Operation Harpie in 2008 and 2009 and Operation Harpie Reinforce in 2010. Colonel François Müller, commander of French Guiana's gendarmes, believes they succeeded. Yet after each operation ends, Brazilian miners return. The Maroni River, which forms the border with Suriname, runs through rainforest and is difficult for the Gendarmerie and the French Foreign Legion to patrol.

  In 2024, President Macron visited the region to commemorate Major Arnaud Blanc of the French special forces, who died during an operation against illegal gold mining in Maripasoula. Macron announced funding for joint efforts with Brazil to protect the Amazon. He also recognized the Brazilian Indigenous leader Raoni Metuktire with the Legion of Honor for his work to conserve the rainforest. Between 10,000 and 15,000 undocumented Brazilian gold miners are thought to work in remote interior villages that can only be reached by air or river.

  The border with Brazil is the longest land border that France shares with any other country. A treaty signed in July 2005 led to the Oyapock River Bridge, completed in 2011, the first land crossing between French Guiana and the rest of the world. Delays in building the border post on the Brazilian side held up its official opening until the 18th of March 2017. By 2020 it was possible to drive without a break from Cayenne to Macapá, on the Amazon River.

  The western border is less settled. Suriname claims about a tenth of the Maripasoula commune. Suriname says the boundary follows the Marowini River to the east, while France says it follows the Litani River and Coulé-Coulé Creek to the west. A bilateral commission has been set up to resolve the dispute. No bridge crosses the Maroni, only a ferry to Albina.

  Inland, eight municipalities still have no road access, including Ouanary, Camopi, Saül and Maripasoula. Plans to pave roads are often opposed by environmental movements, who point to forest fragmentation and problems for Amerindian and Maroon communities. Until then, pirogue cabs carry passengers along the Marowijne and Oyapock rivers, including across the border to Albina in Suriname or Oiapoque in Brazil.

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• 8. Peoples and Festivals

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  At the 2022 census, 55.4 percent of residents had been born in French Guiana, 8.2 percent in metropolitan France and 2.7 percent in the French Caribbean. Another 33.4 percent were born abroad, mostly in Suriname, Brazil and Haiti. About half of all residents live in the Cayenne metropolitan area, which counted 153,884 people in 2023.

  Migration waves tell the story. The 1902 eruption of Montagne Pelée brought migrants from Martinique. Hmong refugees from Laos arrived in 1977. In the late 1980s, more than 10,000 Surinamese refugees, mostly Maroons, fled their country's civil war. Population grew 5.8 percent per year between the 1982 and 1990 censuses, the fastest in the territory's history. Today the largest foreign group is Surinamese, about one in eight residents, followed by Haitians at 9.3 percent and Brazilians at 9.2 percent. Between 15 and 18 percent of the whole population lacks legal status.

  Youth shapes the numbers. Half of French Guiana's residents are under 25. A 2021 report found that 37 percent of people aged 21 to 29 leave to study or work elsewhere. With 3.63 children per woman in 2019, the territory had the highest fertility rate in Latin America.

  Its languages are as varied as its people. French is official, but French Guianese Creole, spoken by about 50,000 people in 2006, serves as a lingua franca for Amerindians, Maroons, Chinese, Brazilians and Haitians. There are six Amerindian languages and four Maroon creole languages. Saramaccan, the most distinct of the Maroon languages, shows strong Portuguese influence and had 14,500 speakers in French Guiana. The Maroons, descendants of escaped African slaves, live mainly along the Maroni River. The main groups are the Saramaca, Aukan and Boni. As of the late 1990s, there was evidence of an uncontacted group of Wayampi.

  The Carnival is considered the longest in the world. It runs on Sunday afternoons from Epiphany in early January to Ash Wednesday. Groups parade on decorated floats to percussion and brass, Brazilian groups bring Rio-style rhythms, and the Chinese community of Cayenne adds dragons. In the evening, Touloulous, the typical characters of the carnival, attend the paré-masked balls.

  At Easter, families eat awara broth. At weddings, they serve Colombo, a type of curry that has become a staple. Atipas, local fish, are often cooked with coconut milk.

  The national football team, known as Yana Dòkò, played its first match against Dutch Guiana in 1936 and lost 3-1. Its biggest victory was 11-1 over St. Pierre and Miquelon on the 26th of September 2012. Its heaviest defeat was 9-0 against Dutch Guiana on the 2nd of March 1947. It is not recognized by FIFA, but it plays in CONCACAF competitions. The Tour of Guiana, a nine-stage cycling race linking Cayenne, Kourou and Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, has been international since 1978 and now draws riders of more than 10 nationalities.

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