Equatorial Guinea Emoji & Symbols

The flag of Equatorial Guinea has three horizontal stripes, green, white and red, with a blue triangle at the hoist and the national coat of arms in the centre of the white stripe. Green is usually read as the country's natural wealth, its forests and farms; white as peace; red as the blood shed for independence; and blue as the sea that joins the mainland to the islands. Its basic design dates from independence from Spain on 12 October 1968. Under the dictatorship of Francisco Macías Nguema the emblem in the middle was replaced, and the original was restored in 1979. In chat the colours are written 💚🤍❤️💙, or as squares 🟩⬜🟥🟦.

The Equatorial Guinea flag emoji 🇬🇶 is not a stored picture. It is two regional indicator letters, 🇬 and 🇶, spelling GQ, the country's ISO code, and phones and apps that know the pair draw the flag. Country flags became standard emoji in 2015, so every current phone shows it. Windows' own emoji font draws no country flags, so on a Windows PC it often appears as the letters GQ while the person you send it to sees the flag. In an emoji keyboard it is found under "Equatorial Guinea" in English and "Guinea Ecuatorial" in Spanish.

Equatorial Guinea national symbols: the god tree and six stars

The coat of arms on the flag is a silver shield with a silk cotton tree, the ceiba, known as the árbol de Dios or god tree 🌳. It is said to recall the great tree under which a treaty between a local king and Spain was signed. Above the shield stand six gold six-pointed stars ⭐, one for the mainland region of Río Muni and one for each of the five islands: Bioko, Annobón, Corisco, Elobey Grande and Elobey Chico. Below it a ribbon carries the motto Unidad, Paz, Justicia, Unity, Peace, Justice, which in emoji is 🤝🕊️⚖️. That ribbon is the answer to "what language is on the Equatorial Guinea flag": Spanish.

The country comes in two very different halves. The former capital, Malabo, is on Bioko 🏝️, a volcanic island in the Gulf of Guinea that lies much closer to Cameroon than to the rest of the country. Its peak, Pico Basilé, rises to just over 3,000 metres 🌋, Malabo's twin-towered cathedral ⛪ faces the old colonial streets near the harbour, and the south of the island around Ureca is one of the wettest places in Africa 🌧️. On the mainland, Río Muni, between Cameroon 🇨🇲 and Gabon 🇬🇦, is rainforest and long beaches 🌴🏖️; its biggest city, Bata, is the largest in the country, and in the forest to the east the government has been building a new capital, Ciudad de la Paz 🏗️. Since oil was found offshore in the 1990s 🛢️, oil and gas have dominated the economy.

Bioko is famous among naturalists for its rare monkeys 🐒, such as the drill and Pennant's red colobus, and for the sea turtles 🐢 that come ashore on its southern beaches to nest. On the mainland, Monte Alén National Park 🏞️ shelters gorillas, chimpanzees and forest elephants 🦍🐘, and African grey parrots 🦜 live in both halves of the country. Fishermen still work the coast in long wooden canoes 🛶🎣.

Spanish in Africa: ñ, á, ¿ and ¡ in Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea is the only independent country in Africa where Spanish is the main official language, which is why searches ask "is Equatorial Guinea Hispanic". CLDR estimates put Spanish speakers at about 1.6 million of roughly 1.8 million people. French became a second official language in 1998 and Portuguese a third around 2010, and the country joined the Community of Portuguese Language Countries in 2014. At home many people speak African languages: Fang, the largest, with an estimated 0.9 million speakers mostly on the mainland, Bubi on Bioko, Ndowe on the coast, Fa d'Ambô, a Portuguese-based creole on Annobón, and Pichi, an English-based creole heard in Malabo. Our Spanish, French, Portuguese and Fang collections cover those languages.

Written Spanish needs a few letters beyond plain A–Z: the acute accents á é í ó ú that mark stress (Río Muni, Annobón, Pico Basilé), ü in güe and güi (pingüino), and ñ, a letter of its own (España, año). Questions and exclamations open with ¿ and ¡, as in ¡Viva Guinea Ecuatorial!, and quotations may use the angle quotes « ».

To type them on Windows, hold Alt and type on the number pad: Alt+164 ñ, Alt+165 Ñ, Alt+160 á, Alt+130 é, Alt+161 í, Alt+162 ó, Alt+163 ú, Alt+129 ü, Alt+168 ¿, Alt+173 ¡. On a Mac, Option+N then N gives ñ, Option+E then a vowel gives the acute accent, Option+U then U gives ü, Option+1 gives ¡ and Option+Shift+? gives ¿. On phones, long-press n, a vowel, ? or !. In HTML they are ñ, á, ¿ and ¡.

The currency is the Central African CFA franc (code XAF), shared with Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Chad. It has no Unicode sign: prices are written with FCFA after the amount, as in 5.000 FCFA. The country's own earlier currency, the ekwele, was replaced by the CFA franc in 1985.

Sport emoji: Nzalang Nacional ⚽ and Eric the Eel 🏊

The national football team is the Nzalang Nacional, the National Thunder, so fans pair the ball with lightning: 🇬🇶⚽⚡. Equatorial Guinea co-hosted the Africa Cup of Nations with Gabon in 2012 and hosted it alone in 2015 at short notice, when the team reached the semi-finals in front of home crowds 🏟️. The women's team, Nzalang Femenino, won the African women's championship in 2008 and 2012 🏆 and played at the 2011 Women's World Cup.

The country's most famous athlete may be a swimmer 🏊. At the Sydney Olympics in 2000, Eric Moussambani, who had learned to swim only months before, swam his 100 metres freestyle heat alone after the other two swimmers false-started, struggled through the second length and was cheered home by the whole stadium. "Eric the Eel" became one of the best-loved stories of those Games.

Equatoguinean food, music and holiday emoji

Everyday meals are built on plantain 🍌, cassava and cocoyam (malanga) 🫜🍠, fish from the sea and rivers 🐟, and sauces thickened with peanuts 🥜. The best-known dish is pepesup, a peppery fish soup 🐟🌶️🍲, and coconuts, mangoes and pineapples 🥥🥭🍍 grow everywhere. Under Spanish rule Bioko, then called Fernando Pó, was a cocoa island and the mainland grew coffee, which is why 🍫☕ belong in the set.

Drums 🥁🪘 lead most traditional music. The Fang epic singers accompany themselves on the mvet, a stick zither with gourd resonators that has no emoji of its own 🎶, and the balélé is the dance of Bioko and Annobón, performed at Christmas and on holidays 💃🕺. Most people are Christian, largely Catholic ✝️, so 🎄 is a big season. The national day is Independence Day, 12 October, sent as 🇬🇶🎉🎆 with ¡Feliz Día de la Independencia!.