French guiana

Prayer times in French guiana

2:35 PM • -03:00 GMT

About French guiana

French Guiana, a region of vast, largely uninhabited rainforest and rivers, is an overseas department and region of France located on the northeast coast of South America. Covering a land area of approximately 83,534 square kilometers, French Guiana is known for its very low population density, with only about 290,000 inhabitants, almost half of whom live in the administrative center, Cayenne. The ethnic composition of the population is diverse, with groups of indigenous people, Africans, Asians, and Europeans cohabitating and contributing to a rich and unique cultural mix. The official language is French, reflecting its status as a part of France, but many other languages are spoken due to its multiculturalism. The Euro is the official currency. French Guiana's economy is characterized by a large service sector in Cayenne and Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni and an over-reliance on mainland France for subsidies, business, higher education, and health care. A major part of the local economy is the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, the spaceport for the European Space Agency, and Arianespace. French Guiana has a tropical climate, with a wet and a dry season, and is predominantly covered with tropical rainforest. The territory also houses one of the few pristine expanses of habitat left in the world, the Tumuc-Humac mountains, which are extraordinarily rich in species and in which new species are being discovered regularly.