Malabo, formerly Santa Isabel, city, Equatorial Guinea, the country's capital, and largest community, a port on the Gulf of Guinea. It is located on the northern coast of Bioko Island (formerly Fernando Póo) near the equator. It is the nation's chief administrative and economic center; exports include locally produced cocoa, copra, coffee, timber, and fish products.
The city was founded by the British in 1827 as Port Clarence, or Clarencetown, and was used until the early 1840s as a base for suppressing the slave trade. Renamed Santa Isabel, it later became the capital of Spanish Guinea and subsequently of the Spanish overseas province of Fernando Póo. The city was made the capital of newly independent Equatorial Guinea in 1968. Its present name was adopted in 1973. Population (1990 estimate) 30,000.
