Guinea

Guinea is a country in West Africa.

It is next to the big Atlantic Ocean. It has hills, grassland and forests. The capital city is Conakry.

Guinea is a country in West Africa with a coast on the Atlantic Ocean. It has four very different regions: a rainy coast, the high Fouta Djallon plateaus, the flat grasslands of Upper Guinea and the hilly Forest Region in the southeast.

More than 20 West African rivers begin in Guinea, including the Niger, the Sénégal and the Gambia. The capital, Conakry, is on the coast. Guinea's 2025 census counted about 17.5 million people, and French is the official language.

Guinea is bordered by Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Côte d'Ivoire to the southeast, and Liberia and Sierra Leone to the south, with the Atlantic to the west. Its four regions, Lower Guinea, the Fouta Djallon, Upper Guinea and the Forest Region, largely match the areas of its major language groups.

The National Institute of Statistics' fourth census (RGPH-4), taken in July 2025, counted 17,521,167 residents, a density of 71 per km², with 43 percent under 15. Natural resources are plentiful, including a large portion of the world's bauxite and significant iron, gold and diamonds, yet the economy rests largely on subsistence farming. After a military takeover in 2021, a new constitution was approved in September 2025, and Mamady Doumbouya won the presidential election of December 28, 2025.

Conakry is the biggest city.

It sits on a thin piece of land in the sea. In the southeast stands Mount Nimba, a tall green mountain. Rare animals live there.

Conakry, the capital and main port, began on Tombo Island and spreads up the Camayenne Peninsula into the Atlantic. Kankan, in Upper Guinea, is a center for trade and learning. Labé is a market town in the heart of the Fouta Djallon, and Nzérékoré serves the Forest Region.

In the far southeast, Mount Nimba rises to 1,752 meters on the borders with Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire. Its forests and mountain grasslands are protected in the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve, a World Heritage Site since 1981.

Conakry, the capital and main port, lies on Tombo Island and spreads up the Camayenne (Kaloum) Peninsula; the old city on the island keeps a colonial layout, and an industrial zone has grown northward from the tip of the peninsula. The 2025 census counted 3,407,327 people in the Conakry region. Kankan is a commercial, educational, administrative and Muslim religious center; Labé and Nzérékoré serve the Fouta Djallon and the Forest Region; Kindia and Mamou are trading centers, and Boké, Fria and Kamsar are industrial towns.

UNESCO inscribed the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve in 1981; it covers 17,540 ha, 12,540 ha of them in Guinea and the rest in Côte d'Ivoire, and has been on the List of World Heritage in Danger since 1992. UNESCO calls it a water tower, with about fifty springs, rising to 1,752 m. It shelters more than 317 vertebrate species, 107 of them mammals, and more than 2,500 invertebrates, many found nowhere else.

Guinea gets lots and lots of rain.

The rain falls from about April to October. High, flat hills cover the middle. Big rivers start there and flow far away.

Guinea has a wet season from April to October and a dry season from November to March, when a hot, dry wind called the harmattan blows from the Sahara. The coast is very wet: Conakry gets about 4,300 millimeters of rain a year.

The Fouta Djallon is a huge block of sandstone with flat plateaus cut by deep valleys. The Niger River rises there and flows northeast to Mali, while the headwaters of the Sénégal flow north and the Gambia flows northwest. Mangroves fringe the coast, tall grasses cover Upper Guinea, and patches of rainforest grow in the Forest Region.

Lower Guinea's coast is cut by rias, drowned river valleys that form inlets and estuaries, behind which a coastal plain 48–80 km wide rises to the Fouta Djallon. These highlands, mostly a sandstone block of plateaus and deep valleys, cover about 78,000 km², with more than 13,000 km² above 900 m; Mount Tamgué reaches 1,538 m. Upper Guinea's Niger plains slope northeast toward the Sahara at about 300 m, and the Forest Region rises to Mount Nimba, 1,752 m. The Niger and its tributaries flow to Mali, the Bafing and Bakoye form the Sénégal, and the Gambia crosses Senegal and The Gambia.

The tropical climate alternates a dry season (November–March) and a wet season (April–October), heaviest when the intertropical convergence zone arrives in June. Conakry averages about 4,300 mm of rain a year and about 27 °C; the Fouta Djallon gets 1,500–2,300 mm, and Macenta in the Forest Region 2,540 mm or more. Thin, lateritic soils and heavy rain make erosion a constant concern.

Chimpanzees live in Guinea's forests.

Some chimps use stones as tools. A few hippos and manatees live in the rivers. Baboons and many birds live there too.

Guinea does not have big herds of large animals, but it has many interesting ones. Baboons and hyenas are common, and antelope and leopards live there too, although leopards are rare. A few hippos and manatees live in the rivers, and crocodiles live in most rivers.

In the southern Forest Region live monkeys and chimpanzees. On Mount Nimba, chimpanzees use stones as tools, and a rare toad lives there that gives birth to live young.

Britannica notes that Guinea is not rich in big game: baboons and hyenas are common, several antelope species and the occasional leopard occur, a few hippopotamuses and manatees live in the rivers of Lower and Upper Guinea, and crocodiles are found in most rivers. Monkeys, chimpanzees and rare birds live in the south of the Forest Region near Liberia; snakes include mambas, vipers, cobras and pythons.

UNESCO highlights the Mount Nimba reserve's threatened endemics: the viviparous Nimba toad (Nimbaphrynoides occidentalis), critically threatened and found only at high altitude, and the Nimba otter shrew (Micropotamogale lamottei), a small semi-aquatic insectivore, as well as chimpanzees that use stones as tools. Badiar National Park, managed jointly with Senegal's Niokolo-Koba, and Haut Niger National Park protect savanna and dry woodland, while farming has turned much of the Forest Region's rainforest into savanna.

About 17.5 million people live in Guinea.

People speak French and many other languages. Many families grow rice, cassava and peanuts. Lots of children live there.

Guinea's regions match its main languages. On the coast many people speak Susu, in the Fouta Djallon many speak Pulaar, the language of the Fulani, and in Upper Guinea Malinke is most widespread. In the Forest Region people speak Kpelle, Loma and Kisi. French is the official language.

Most people farm. In the Fouta Djallon, families grow peanuts and fonio, a small grain; on the coast, rice, bananas and palms; in the Forest Region, rice is the main food, with cassava and peanuts. About 43 out of every 100 people are under 15.

Britannica describes Susu as the lingua franca of most of the coast, Pulaar (a Fula dialect) as the main language of the Fouta Djallon, Malinke (Maninkakan) as the most widespread in Upper Guinea, and Kpelle, Loma and Kisi in the Forest Region. More than four-fifths of people are Muslim, mostly Sunni, and fewer than one-tenth are Christian. Some three-fifths of people live in rural areas.

Agriculture and other rural work provide about three-fourths of jobs. The Fouta Djallon plateaus serve as part-time pasture, with peanuts and fonio on the hillsides and tsetse-resistant Ndama cattle; Lower Guinea trades palm oil, coconuts, rice, bananas, salt and fish; Upper Guinea grows grains and cassava and trades shea butter; and the Forest Region grows rice, cassava, peanuts and corn, with coffee, kola nuts and oil palms as cash crops. River and ocean fisheries supply fresh, dried and smoked fish.