Guinea

The lands of Guinea lay at the edge of the great medieval West African empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, and the highland region of Fouta Djallon became an Islamic state. France colonised the territory in the nineteenth century. In 1958, Guinea made a historic choice: alone among France's African colonies, it voted to reject continued association and take immediate, full independence, under Ahmed Sekou Toure, who then ruled the country as a one-party socialist state for decades.

Guinea has a varied landscape divided into four natural regions: a humid coastal plain on the Atlantic, the cool highlands of the Fouta Djallon in the centre, the dry savanna of Upper Guinea in the northeast, and the rainforest of the southeast. The Fouta Djallon highlands are especially important, for the great rivers of West Africa, including the Niger, the Senegal, and the Gambia, all rise there, earning Guinea its nickname as the water tower of the region.

The flag of Guinea has three vertical bands of red, yellow, and green, the pan-African colours, arranged in a pattern resembling a reversed French tricolour. The red is said to represent the blood of those who died for independence and for labour, the yellow the sun and the country's gold and other mineral wealth, and the green its vegetation and agriculture. The colours link Guinea to the wider movement for African unity and freedom that flourished at its independence.

The great majority of Guineans are Muslims, predominantly Sunni, a faith with deep roots in the region, especially in the Fouta Djallon, which was historically a centre of Islamic learning. There are Christian and traditional-religion minorities, particularly in the forested southeast. Islam is central to the culture and daily life of most of the country, often coexisting with older customs, and Sufi traditions have long been influential among Guinea's Muslim communities.

Guinean cuisine is West African in style, based on rice, which is the staple of most meals and grown across the country, served with rich sauces. These sauces are often made with leaves such as cassava or potato leaves, peanuts, or okra, and include meat or fish, while fonio, an ancient and nutritious local grain, is also eaten. Grilled and smoked fish, plantains, and generous use of chili and palm oil characterise a food culture rooted in the produce of the land.

Agriculture employs most Guineans, who grow rice, the dietary staple, along with cassava, maize, fonio, and fruits, much of it on small farms, while coffee and cocoa are grown for export in the forested south. The country's true wealth, however, lies in its minerals: Guinea holds some of the largest reserves of bauxite, the ore from which aluminium is made, in the world, and is a leading global exporter, along with significant deposits of gold, diamonds, and iron ore.

Guinea's bold decision in 1958 to take immediate independence, in defiance of France, was a landmark in African history, though it was followed by decades of harsh one-party rule and economic isolation under Sekou Toure. Since his death the country has experienced military coups, a brief democratic opening, and renewed instability, as well as the West African Ebola epidemic, which began in Guinea in 2013. Its vast mineral wealth has remained both a promise and a source of contention.

Guinea has a population of around 14 million people, made up of several major ethnic groups, including the Fulani of the Fouta Djallon, the Malinke, and the Susu, speaking many languages with French as the official tongue. The population is young and largely rural, concentrated in the agricultural regions and in the capital and main port, Conakry, on the Atlantic coast. The relationships among the country's main ethnic groups have been an important factor in its politics.