French Guiana 2

French Guiana

French Guiana 3
An Ariane 5 Rocket Being Processed at the Guiana Space Centre

There is very little manufacturing. Agriculture is largely undeveloped and is mainly confined to the area near the coast and along the Maroni River. Sugar and bananas were traditionally two of the main cash crops grown for export but have almost completely disappeared. Today they have been replaced by livestock raising (essentially beef cattle and pigs) in the coastal savannas between Cayenne and the second-largest town, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, and market gardening (fruits and vegetables) developed by the Hmong communities settled in French Guiana in the 1970s, both destined to the local market. A thriving rice production, developed on polders near Mana from the early 1980s to the late 2000s, has almost completely disappeared since 2011 due to marine erosion and new EU plant health rules which forbid the use of many pesticides and fertilizers. Tourism, especially eco-tourism, is growing. Unemployment has been persistently high in the last few decades: 20% to 25% (22.3% in 2012).

Transportation:

French Guiana’s main international airport is Cayenne – Félix Eboué Airport, located in the commune of Matoury, a southern suburb of Cayenne. There are two flights a day to Paris (Orly Airport), served by Air France and Air Caraïbes. The flight time from Cayenne to Paris is 8 hours and 10 minutes, and from Paris to Cayenne it is 8 hours and 30 minutes. There are also flights to Fort-de-France, Pointe-à-Pitre, Belém, and Fortaleza.

French Guiana 4
Cayenne – Félix Eboué Airport

French Guiana’s main seaport is the port of Dégrad des Cannes, located on the estuary of the Mahury River, in the commune of Remire-Montjoly, a south-eastern suburb of Cayenne. Almost all of French Guiana’s imports and exports pass through the port of Dégrad des Cannes. Built in 1969, it replaced the old harbor of Cayenne which was congested and could not cope with modern traffic.

French Guiana 5
Degrad de Cannes

An asphalted road from Régina to Saint-Georges de l’Oyapock (a town by the Brazilian border) was opened in 2004, completing the road from Cayenne to the Brazilian border. It is now possible to drive on a fully paved road from Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni on the Surinamese border to Saint-Georges de l’Oyapock on the Brazilian border.

Following a treaty between France and Brazil signed in July 2005, the Oyapock River Bridge over the Oyapock River was built and completed in 2011, becoming the first land crossing ever between French Guiana and the rest of the world (there exists no other bridge crossing the Oyapock River, and no bridge crossing the Maroni River marking the border with Suriname, although there is a ferry crossing to Albina, Suriname).

French Guiana 6
Oyapock River Bridge

The bridge was officially opened on March 18, 2017. However, since the Brazilian government is yet to complete its border posts, only passenger vehicles will be allowed through the bridge for the time being. The inauguration makes it possible to drive uninterrupted from Cayenne to Macapá, the capital of the state of Amapá in Brazil.

Flag of French Guiana:

The flag of French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America, is the French flag.

Scroll to Top