French is the official language in Gabon, spoken natively in large metropolitan areas and in total by 320,000 people or 14% of the country.

After the war, France worked for universal primary education in Gabon, and by the 1960-61 census, 47% of the Gabonese over the age of 14 spoke some French, while 13% were literate in the language.

[3] It is estimated that 80%[4] of the country's population can speak the language competently and one-third of residents of Libreville, the capital city, had become native French speakers.

They are generally spoken but not written; while missionaries from the United States and France developed transcriptions for a number of languages based on the Latin alphabet starting in the 1840s, and translated the Bible into several of them, French colonial policy officially promoted the study of French and discouraged African languages.

The remainder of the languages (including Teke, Vili, Punu, Myene and Kota) are single-digit percentages, and some have only a few thousand speakers.