Guinea [ a ] officially the Republic of Guinea [ b ] , is a coastal country in West Africa. 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.
Formerly French Guinea , it achieved independence in French, the official language of Guinea, is the language of communication in schools, government administration, and the media. Guinea's economy is mostly dependent on agriculture and mineral production. 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.
In , the official name became the People's Revolutionary Republic of Guinea. The land that is now Guinea either bordered or was situated within a series of historic African empires before the French arrived in the s and claimed the terrain as part of colonial French West Africa. Guinea declared independence from France on 2 October From independence until the presidential election of , Guinea was governed by multiple autocratic rulers.
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. 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 It continued to prosper until a civil war, over succession, followed the death of Askia Daoud in The empire fell to invaders from Morocco in , 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 to with a written constitution and alternate rulers.
