[1] The ropeway conveyor ran for 76 km from Moanda in the Haut-Ogooué Province of south eastern Gabon to Mbinda in the Republic of Congo.
In 1954, the Compagnie Minière de l'Ogooué (COMILOG), a French-American company formed the previous year, decided to begin mining manganese in the Gabonese town of Moanda.
[6] The government of Gabon was keen to ship the valuable manganese ore through its own ports, and routed a new railway, the Transgabonais, from the national capital Libreville to Moanda, and on to Franceville.
While Moanda continued to prosper, Bakoumba and Mbinda suffered from the withdrawal of their main industry.
COMILOG funded the creation of the Lékédi Park at Bakoumba to encourage the development of a tourist industry,[6] but some groups in Congo felt that unemployment there was not addressed.