Guinea

From the heartland of the Mande to the bauxite republic

On the upper Niger in eastern Guinea lay the cradle of the Mande peoples and of the medieval Mali Empire, and the country's highlands and savannas fell in turn within the reach of the great Sahelian states. In the eighteenth century Fulani reformers built the Islamic Imamate of Futa Jallon, and in the nineteenth Samori Touré forged the Wassoulou Empire and waged a long armed resistance to French conquest until his capture in 1898. As French Guinea within French West Africa, the territory stood apart in 1958 when, alone among France's African colonies, it voted 'Non' to Charles de Gaulle's proposed Community and became independent on 2 October 1958 under Ahmed Sékou Touré. Decades of authoritarian one-party rule, the Camp Boiro repression, military coups in 1984, 2008 and 2021, and the 2009 stadium massacre have marked its independent history, even as Guinea holds some of the world's largest bauxite reserves.