Guinea

Click a letter for the index

Or search the encyclopaedia:

 

 

Go

 

Country in West Africa, bounded north by Senegal, northeast by Mali, southeast by Côte d'Ivoire, south by Liberia and Sierra Leone, west by the Atlantic Ocean, and northwest by Guinea-Bissau.

Government
The 1991 constitution, amended in 1992, provides for a directly elected president, who is head of both state and government and serves a five-year term, and a 114-chamber single-chamber national assembly, similarly elected for the same length of term.

History
Guinea was formerly part of the Muslim Mali Empire, which flourished in the region between the 13th and 15th centuries. Its first European visitors were the Portuguese in the mid-15th century, who, together with France and Britain, established the slave trade in the area. In 1849 France proclaimed the Boké region in the east a French protectorate and expanded its territory until by the late 19th century most of West Africa was united under French rule as French West Africa.

Touré's presidency
French Guinea became fully independent in 1958, under the name of Guinea, after a referendum rejected a proposal to remain a self-governing colony within the French Community. The first president was Sékou Touré. He made the Democratic Party of Guinea the only political organization, suppressed political opposition, and embarked upon a policy of socialist revolution. There were unsuccessful attempts to overthrow him in 1961, 1965, 1967, and 1970, and, suspicious of conspiracies by foreign powers, he put his country into virtual diplomatic isolation. Touré's regime was authoritarian and harsh, but by the late 1970s relations with neighbours, the USA, and France had improved and he moved towards a mixed economy, with private enterprise becoming legal in 1979. Touré was re-elected unopposed in 1980.

Military rule
A week after Touré's death in 1984, the army staged a bloodless coup. The constitution was suspended and a military committee for national recovery set up, headed by Col Lansana Conté. He moved away from socialism, released hundreds of political prisoners, lifted press restrictions, and persuaded 200,000 Guineans who had fled the country during the Touré regime to return. Conté firmly controlled political opposition, and in 1985 loyal troops foiled an attempt to overthrow him while he was out of the country. In 1990 a new multiparty constitution was approved and Guinea contributed troops to the multinational force that attempted to stabilize Liberia. Conté was re-elected by a narrow margin in the first direct presidential elections in December 1993 and his supporters won the assembly elections in 1995. After another attempted coup was thwarted in February 1996, President Conté was re-elected in December 1998.

Border clashes
From October 2000, civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone began to spill over into Guinea, creating hundreds of thousands of refugees as people fled the conflict. Sierra Leonean and Liberian rebels crossed the border into Guinea and more than 1,000 were killed in clashes with Guinean troops. A civil war was averted when Guinea agreed plans with Liberia and Sierra Leone to tackle the insurgents.

Opposition leader pardoned
In May 2002, Alpha Condé, leader of the opposition Rassemblement du Peuple Guinéen (RPG; Rally of the Guinean People) who had been sentenced to five years imprisonment in September 2001 for sedition, was pardoned by President Conté and released. But Conté continued to suppress opposition and in 2001 the constitution was changed, after a referendum, to allow him run for a third term. Despite the weak economy, he won the presidential elections in 2003, which the opposition boycotted.

The cog-wheel and rice plant stand for industry and agriculture. The stars represent the 14 states. Blue symbolizes peace. Red denotes courage. Effective date: 4 January 1974. >>