Guinea
Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Ivory Coast to the southeast, and Sierra Leone and Liberia to the south. It is sometimes referred to as Guinea-Conakry, after its capital Conakry, to distinguish it from other territories in the eponymous region, such as Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Guinea has a population of 14 million and an area of.
Formerly French Guinea, it achieved independence in 1958. Guinea has a history of military coups d'état. After decades of authoritarian rule, it held its first democratic election in 2010. As it continued to hold multi-party elections, the country still faces ethnic conflicts, corruption, and abuses by the military and police. In 2011, the United States government claimed that torture by security forces and abuse of women and children were ongoing human rights issues. In 2021, a military faction overthrew president Alpha Condé and suspended the constitution.
Guinea is a member of United Nations, ECOWAS, South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and La Francophonie. Its membership in the African Union has been suspended since the 2021 coup. Muslims represent 90% of the population. The country is divided into four geographic regions: Maritime Guinea on the Atlantic coast, the Fouta Djallon or Middle Guinea highlands, the Upper Guinea savanna region in the northeast, and the Guinée forestière region of tropical forests. French, the official language of Guinea, is the language of communication in schools, government administration, and the media. More than 24 indigenous languages are spoken, and the largest are Susu, Pular, and Maninka, which dominate respectively in Maritime Guinea, Fouta Djallon, and Upper Guinea, while Guinée forestière is ethnolinguistically diverse. Guinea's economy is mostly dependent on agriculture and mineral production. It is the world's second-largest producer of bauxite and has deposits of diamonds and gold. As of the most recent survey in 2018, 66.2% of the population is affected by multidimensional poverty, and an additional 16.4% are vulnerable to it.
Name
Guinea is named after the Guinea region which lies along the Gulf of Guinea. It stretches north through the forested tropical regions and ends at the Sahel. The English term Guinea comes directly from the Portuguese word Guiné which emerged in the mid-15th century to refer to the lands inhabited by the Guineus, a generic term for the African peoples south of the Senegal River, in contrast to the "tawny" Zenaga Berbers above it, whom they called Azengues or Moors.In 1978, the official name became the People's Revolutionary Republic of Guinea. In 1984, the country was renamed the Republic of Guinea after the death of the first president, Ahmed Sékou Touré.
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.West African empires and kingdoms
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. The Sosso Empire came and stayed from 12th to 13th centuries; later, the Mali Empire came when Soundiata Kéïta defeated the Sosso ruler Soumangourou Kanté at the Battle of Kirina in. The Mali Empire was ruled by Mansa, including Kankou Moussa, who made a hajj to Mecca in 1324. After his reign, the Mali Empire began to decline and was ultimately supplanted by its vassal states in the 15th century.The Songhai Empire expanded its power in about 1460. It continued to prosper until a civil war, over succession, followed the death of Askia Daoud in 1582. The empire fell to invaders from Morocco in 1591, but the kingdom later split into smaller kingdoms. After the fall of some of the West African empires, various kingdoms existed in what is now Guinea. Fulani Muslims migrated to Futa Jallon in Central Guinea, and established an Islamic state from 1727 to 1896 with a written constitution and alternate rulers. The Wassoulou or Wassulu Empire was led by Samori Toure in the predominantly Malinké area of what is now upper Guinea and southwestern Mali. It moved to Ivory Coast before being conquered by the French.
Colony
European traders competed for the cape trade from the 17th century onward and made inroads earlier. Guinea's colonial period began with French military penetration into the area, and its establishment as a colony on 17 December 1891. As a result of various troubles, France occupied Timbo, the capital of Fouta, in 1896, and a definitive treaty was signed in 1897. The defeat of the armies of Samori Touré, Mansa of the Ouassoulou state and leader of Malinké descent, in 1898 gave France control of what today is Guinea and adjacent areas. The boundaries of the South Rivers were fixed in 1899.France negotiated Guinea's present boundaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the British for Sierra Leone, the Portuguese for their Guinea colony, and Liberia. Under the French, the country formed the Territory of Guinea within French West Africa, administered by a governor general resident in Dakar. Lieutenant governors administered the individual colonies, including Guinea.
File:Ahmed Sékou Touré na obisku v Ljubljani 1961.jpg|thumb|President Ahmed Sékou Touré was supported by Communist states and, in 1961, visited Yugoslavia.
In 1958, the French Fourth Republic collapsed due to political instability and its failures in dealing with its colonies, especially Indochina and Algeria. The French Fifth Republic gave the colonies the choice of autonomy in a new French Community or immediate independence in the referendum of 28 September 1958. Guinea voted overwhelmingly for independence. It was led by Ahmed Sékou Touré, whose Democratic Party of Guinea-African Democratic Rally had won 56 of 60 seats in the 1957 territorial elections.
The French later withdrew, and on 2 October 1958, Guinea proclaimed itself a sovereign and independent republic, with Sékou Touré as president. Later, Opération Persil was planned by Jacques Foccart; they planned to create large quantities of forged Guinean francs to hyperinflate Guinea's economy and to arm Touré's opposition figures. However, the operation was leaked, and soon, the Guinean was issuing a number of official complaints.
Post-colonial
Under Touré's rule
In 1960, Touré declared the Democratic Party of Guinea the country's only legal political party, and for the next 24 years, the government and PDG were one. Touré was re-elected unopposed to four 7-year terms as president, and every 5 years voters were presented with a single list of PDG candidates for the National Assembly.On 22 November 1970, Portuguese forces from neighbouring Portuguese Guinea staged Operation Green Sea, a raid on Conakry by several hundred exiled Guinean opposition forces. Among their goals, the Portuguese military wanted to kill or capture Sekou Touré due to his support of PAIGC, an independence movement and rebel group that had carried out attacks inside Portuguese Guinea from their bases in Guinea. After some fighting, the Portuguese-backed forces retreated. Guinea was elected as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council 1972–73.
In 1977, a declining economy and a ban on all private economic transactions led to the Market Women's Revolt, a series of anti-government riots started by women working in Conakry's Madina Market. Touré vacillated from supporting the Soviet Union to supporting the United States. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw some economic reforms. After the election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as French president, trade increased and the two countries exchanged diplomatic visits.
Under Conté's rule
Sékou Touré died on 26 March 1984 after a heart operation in the United States, and was replaced by Prime Minister Louis Lansana Beavogui, who was to serve as interim president, pending new elections. PDG was due to elect a new leader on 3 April 1984. Under the constitution, that person would have been the only candidate for president. Hours before that meeting, Colonels Lansana Conté and Diarra Traoré seized power in a bloodless coup. Conté assumed the role of president, with Traoré serving as prime minister, until December.File:President Jimmy Carter with President Ahmed Sǩou Tour ̌of Guinea.jpg|thumb|U.S. President Jimmy Carter welcoming Ahmed Sékou Touré outside the White House, Washington, D.C., 1979
Conté denounced the previous regime's record on human rights, releasing 250 political prisoners and encouraging approximately 200,000 more to return from exile. He made explicit the turn away from socialism. In 1992, Conté announced a return to civilian rule, with a presidential poll in 1993, followed by elections to parliament in 1995. In September 2001, the opposition leader Alpha Condé was imprisoned for endangering state security and pardoned 8 months later. Subsequently, he spent time in exile in France.
In 2001, Conté organized and won a referendum to lengthen the presidential term, and in 2003, began his third term after elections were boycotted by the opposition. In January 2005, Conté survived a suspected assassination attempt while making a public appearance in Conakry. His opponents claimed that he was a "tired dictator", whose departure was inevitable, whereas his supporters believed that he was winning a battle with dissidents. According to Foreign Policy, Guinea was in danger of becoming a failed state.
In 2000, Guinea suffered as rebels crossed the borders from Liberia and Sierra Leone. Some thought that the country was headed towards a civil war. Conté blamed neighbouring leaders for coveting Guinea's natural resources, and these claims were denied. In 2003, Guinea agreed to plans with her neighbours to tackle the insurgents. The 2007 Guinean general strike resulted in the appointment of a new prime minister.