Tutu Alicante and Lisa Misol explain in their article in Foreign Policy how the country's leaders have squandered the wealth made from its vast oil and gas reserves, leaving the majority of the people to suffer in extreme poverty.
"Imagine a tiny country flush with oil money, where the wealth per person is on par with that of Spain or Italy. Now picture a place quite the opposite, where nearly two-thirds of the population lives in extreme poverty and infant and child mortality rates are on par with those of the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo." The article goes on to describe how powerful governments support the current Obiang dictatorship and ignore its human rights violations in order to get full advantage of its exports.
For more on Equatorial Guinea and its human rights violations, see CESR's work on the country.