For the past decade, the land rush discourse has analyzed foreign investment in land and agriculture around the world, with Africa being a continent of particular focus due to the scale of acquisitions that have taken place. Gabon, a largely forested state in Central Africa, has been neglected in the land rush conversations, despite having over half of its land allocated to forestry, agriculture, and mining concessions. This paper draws on existing evidence and contributes new empirical data through expert interviews to fill this critical knowledge gap.

Strong national institutional arrangements in the geospatial information management are essential for successful implementation of sustainable land administration system. However, it is not only the existence of institutions but also their effectiveness that leads to the intended goals and reaching of objectives.

Scientific functional zone planning is the key to achieving long-term development goals for cities. The rapid development of remote sensing technology allows for the identification of urban functional zones, which is important since they serve as basic spatial units for urban planning and functioning. The accuracy of three methods—kernel density estimation, term frequency-inverse document frequency, and deep learning—for detecting urban functional zones was investigated using the Gaode points of interest, high-resolution satellite images, and OpenStreetMap.