Guinea Travel Tips

Archaeological evidence indicates that at least some stone tools found in Guinea were the work of peoples who had come there from the Sahara, perhaps because of the desiccation that had occurred in the Saharan region by 2000 BC. Agriculture was practiced along the coast of Guinea by AD 1000, with rice the staple crop.

Most of Upper Guinea fell within the area influenced by the medieval empire of Ghana at the height of its power, but none of present-day Guinea was actually within the empire. The northern half of present-day Guinea was, however, within the later Mali and Songhai empires.

Malinké did not begin arriving in Guinea until the 13th century, nor did the Fulani come in considerable numbers until the 17th century. In 1725, a holy war (jihad) was declared in Futa Jallon by Muslim Fulani. The onslaught, directed against the non-Muslim Malinké and Fulani, was ultimately successful in establishing the independence of the Fulani of Futa Jallon and effecting their unity within a theocratic kingdom under Almamy Karamoka Alfa of Timbo.

Meanwhile, European exploration of the Guinea coast was begun by the Portuguese in the middle of the 15th century. By the 17th century, French, British, and Portuguese traders and slavers were competing with one another. When the slave trade was prohibited during the first half of the 19th century, the Guinea creeks afforded secluded hiding places for slavers harried by the ships of the Royal Navy. French rights along the coast were expressly preserved by the Peace of Paris (1814), and French—as well as British and Portuguese—trading activities expanded in the middle years of the 19th century, when trade in peanuts, palm oil, hides, and rubber replaced that in slaves. The French established a protectorate over Boké in 1849 and consolidated their rule over the coastal areas in the 1860s. This inevitably led to attempts to secure a more satisfactory arrangement with the Fulani chiefs of Futa Jallon. A protectorate was established over the region in 1881, but effective sovereignty was not secured for another 15 years.

Resistance to the consolidation of the French advance up the Senegal and the Niger, toward Lake Chad, was made by Samory Touré, a Malinké born in Upper Guinea. He had seized Kankan in 1879 and established his authority in the area southeast of Siguiri, but his attacks on the area led the inhabitants to seek aid from the French troops already established at Kita in the French Sudan (Soudan Français, now Mali) in 1882. Samory signed treaties with the French in 1886 and again in 1890, but on various pretexts both he and the French later renounced them, and hostilities resumed. His capture in 1898 marked the end of any concerted local resistance to the French occupation of Guinea, Ivory Coast (now Côte d'Ivoire), and southern Mali.

In 1891, Guinea was constituted as a French territory separate from Senegal, of which it had hitherto been a part. Four years later, the French territories in West Africa were federated under a governor-general. The federation structure remained substantially unchanged until Guinea attained independence. In 1946, Africans in Guinea became French citizens, but the franchise was at first restricted to the Europeanized évoulés, and was not replaced by universal adult suffrage until 1957.

The coastal region and much of the inland area have a tropical climate with a long rainy season of six months, a relatively high and uniform annual temperature, and high humidity. Conakry's year-round average high is 29°C (84°F), and the low is 23°C (73°F); its average rainfall is 430 cm (169 in) per year. April is the hottest month; July and August are the wettest. Rainfall in the Futa Jallon is much less (about 150–200 cm/60–80 in) and more irregular, and temperatures are lower; moreover, the daily temperature range is much greater, especially during the dry season. In Upper Guinea, rainfall is lower than in the Futa Jallon; the average daily temperature range is as great as 14°C (25°F), and greater in the dry season. Rainfall in the highlands averages about 280 cm (110 in) annually; temperatures are relatively equable owing to the altitude, although with an average daily range of 18° C (32°F).