A glimpse of French Guiana

Geography

French Guiana has been a French overseas department since 19 March 1946 and has a surface area of 83,534 km². It is located in the North-Eastern part of South America and has common frontiers with Surinam in the West and Brazil in the South bounded respectively by the Maroni river in the West, the Oyapock in the East and the Tumuc Humac mountains in the South. Its latitude ranges from 2° to 5° and its longitude from 51° to 54°. French Guiana, 94% of which is covered with equatorial forest (15% in protected natural reserves since 2002), has a climate with a hydrometry rate of about 90%. The mean temperature is 27°C and the precipitation is heavy in particular during the rainy season from April to June (about 3,500 mm/year). There are four main seasons :

• the long dry season, from August to November,
• the short rainy season from December to February,
• the short dry season also known as the ‘little March summer’ from February to March,
• the long rainy season from April to July.

French Guiana is the only one of the 7 outermost regions of the European Union (including the Azores Islands, the Canary Islands, Guadeloupe, Madeira, Martinique and Reunion Island) to be located on a continent.
Administrative divisions are : 22 communes, 2 arrondissements and 19 cantons.

Population

Currently with a population of 185,000 (INSEE census for 1st January 2004), most of whom live on the coastal strip, the French Guiana population is descended from very diverse origins: Creole (38 %), mainland France (10 %), Amerindian (5 %), Bushinenge, black slaves who revolted and fled deep into the forest and rivers to take refuge (6 %), Hmong (1 %), Chinese (4 %), Caribbean (4 %) and other immigrations (32 %). The main communes (municipalities) are Cayenne, the administrative capital, with 50,395 inhabitants, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni with 19,167 and Kourou with 19,074.

Economy

The Space sector is the principal economic activity of the départment. According to the most recent study by INSEE, in 1994 the Space sector accounted for 49 % of the economic production in French Guiana and 26 % of added value. The knock-on effect is remarkable: the production multiplier was as high as 1.52 in 1994 and one job created in the Space sector generated 4.4 jobs overall in the local economy. Nevertheless French Guiana is still a rural département, with 11.4% of the active population working in agriculture, forestry and fishing.
The service sector is of considerable importance, accounting for 68% of the active population, more than half of whom are in trade (business, services, transports), the rest being in non-commercial services (civil servants, employees of local authorities). Although industry and the construction sector are growing rapidly, they only account for one out of five jobs.

The increase in employment has not been keeping pace with the rapid population growth and the unemployment rate has now gone beyond 26 %.  

Perspectives and potential

 > French Guiana is a well-known centre for research and technology thanks to :

• The combination of the natural wealth of the biodiversity of the Amazon Basin and high technology due to Space research,
• The creation of a university cluster which will house a university and research units,
• Its strategic position at the cross-roads of French, European and South-American settlements
• Foreign investment,
• Major European research and innovation institutes (CNRS, ADEME, Bureau de Recherche Géologique et Minière, etc.)

> A tourist potential offering adventure and discovery ecotourism
> The creation of an export industry free zone (ZFIE) located in the port area of Degrad des Cannes will make a contribution to developing export industries in Guiana. Favourable customs regulations enable South-American companies to label their goods ‘European’ under certain conditions.

Kourou

In 1763, the engineers Mentelle and Trucy drew up the plans for the city which was to receive settlers from mainland France, on the left bank of the Kourou river. The commune, which was occupied by Galibi Indians until the end of the 17th Century, now has 19,000 inhabitants. Kourou, which is 60 km from Cayenne, has a surface area of 2,160 km².

Source IEDOM (Institut d'Emission des Départements d'Outre-Mer)