Sandwiched between Brazil and Suriname, French Guiana is the only remaining colony in South America. A belt of coastal marsh, and an interior of equatorial jungle, combine in a location which was, for years, notorious for the offshore penal colony, Devil's Island. The rainforest, which covers 90% of the territory, is particularly rich in flora and fauna. It harbors over 400,000 species, including more different kinds of birds than in the whole of Europe.

Concentrated near the coast, the population is ethnically mixed. While 40% are creoles, there are some 20,000 Amerindians and a village of 1000 Hmong who fled civil war in Laos in the 1980s.

A campaign for greater autonomy in the late 1970s and early 1980s led to limited decentralization of power to a regional council. The grip on local power by the Guianese Socialist Party (PSG) has been undermined since 1993 by a more unified opposition, but it is still the largest party in the regional council.

During the 1990s the people have become increasingly vocal in their condemnation of the French government's perceived indifference to their country's problems, and there were riots in 1996 and 1997 over the education system. The PSG has accordingly campaigned for greater autonomy. As an overseas département of metropolitan France, French Guiana is also a region of the EU, but it is heavily dependent on France itself for aid, food, and manufactured goods. It has a number of valuable natural resources, including gold, fishing, and forestry, and also has potential for increased tourism, but these are yet to be fully exploited because of a lack of skilled labor and investment and an underdeveloped infrastructure.

The Guiana Space Center, which is situated on the coast at Kourou, has been operational since 1964. From there the Ariane rockets of the European Space Agency (ESA) are launched.