Guinea: Map & History

History

The land that is now Guinea either bordered or was situated within a series of historic African empires before the French arrived in the 1890s and claimed the terrain as part of colonial French West Africa. Guinea declared independence from France on 2 October 1958. From independence until the presidential election of 2010, Guinea was governed by multiple autocratic rulers.

What is now Guinea sat on the fringes of various West African empires. The earliest, the Ghana Empire, grew on trade and ultimately fell after repeated incursions of the Almoravids. It was in this period that Islam first arrived in the region by way of North African traders.

Economy

As of the most recent survey in 2018, 66.2% of the population is affected by multidimensional poverty and an additional 16.4% vulnerable to it.

The agriculture sector at some point employed approximately 75% of the country. The rice is cultivated in the flooded zones between streams and rivers. The local production of rice is not sufficient to feed the country, so rice is imported from Asia. Guinea is one of the emerging regional producers of apples and pears. There are plantations of grapes, pomegranates, and more recent years have seen the development of strawberry plantations, based on the vertical hydroponic system.

Guinea has 25% or more of the world's known bauxite reserves. It has diamonds, gold, and other metals. The gold production of Guinea in 2015 was 17 metric tonnes.

Culture

Football is the "most popular sport" in the country of Guinea, alongside basketball. Football operations are run by the Guinean Football Federation. The association administers the national football team, and the national league. It was founded in 1960 and affiliated with FIFA since 1962 and with the Confederation of African Football since 1963. The Guinea national football team, nicknamed Syli nationale (National Elephants), have played international football since 1962. Their first opponent was East Germany. They have yet to reach World Cup finals, and were runners-up to Morocco in the Africa Cup of Nations in 1976.

Guinée Championnat National is the top division of Guinean football. Since it was established in 1965, 3 teams have dominated in winning the Guinée Coupe Nationale.

Geography

Guinea shares a border with Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Ivory Coast to the east, Sierra Leone to the southwest and Liberia to the south. The nation forms a crescent as it curves from its southeast region to the north and west, to its northwest border with Guinea-Bissau and southwestern coast on the Atlantic Ocean. The sources of the Niger River, the Gambia River, and the Senegal River are all found in the Guinea Highlands. At 245,857 km2 (94,926 sq mi), Guinea is roughly the size of the United Kingdom.