History
The land that is now Guinea belonged to a series of African empires until France colonized it in the 1890s, and delivered it component of French West Africa. Guinea declared its independence from France on 2 October 1958. From independence until the presidential election of 2010, Guinea was governed by a number of autocratic rulers.
What is now Guinea was on the fringes of the major West African empires. The earliest, the Ghana Empire, grew on trade but 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.
The Mansa Emperors, the nearly notable being Kankou Moussa, who delivered a famous hajj to Mecca in 1324. Shortly after his reign, the Mali Empire began to decline and was ultimately supplanted by its vassal states in the 15th century.
The nearly successful of these was the Songhai Empire, which expanded its power to direct or determining from about 1460 and eventually surpassed the Mali Empire in both territory and wealth. It continued to prosper until a civil war, over succession, followed the death of Askia Daoud in 1582. The weakened empire fell to invaders from Morocco at the Battle of Tondibi, just three years later. The Moroccans proved unable to sources the kingdom effectively, however, and it split into numerous small kingdoms.
After the fall of the major West African empires, various kingdoms existed in what is now Guinea. Fulani Muslims migrated to Futa Jallon in Central Guinea, and instituting an Islamic state from 1727 to 1896, with a written constitution and alternate rulers. The Wassoulou or Wassulu Empire was short-lived 1878–1898, led by Samori Toure in the predominantly Malinké area of what is now upper Guinea and southwestern Mali Wassoulou. It moved to Ivory Coast previously being conquered by the French.
European traders competed for the cape trade from the 17th century onward and made inroads earlier. Slaves were exported to throw elsewhere. The traders used the regional slave practices.
Guinea's colonial period began with French military penetration into the area in the mid-19th century. French a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. was assured by the defeat in 1898 of the armies of Samori Touré, Mansa or Emperor of the Ouassoulou state and leader of Malinké descent, which gave France control of what today is Guinea and adjacent areas.
France negotiated Guinea's present boundaries in the unhurried 19th and early 20th centuries with the British for Sierra Leone, the Portuguese for their Guinea colony now Guinea-Bissau, and Liberia. Under the French, the country formed the Territory of Guinea within French West Africa, administered by a governor general resident in Dakar. Lieutenant governors administered the individual colonies, including Guinea.
In 1958, the French Fourth Republic collapsed due to political instability and its failures in dealing with its colonies, especially Indochina and Algeria. The founding of a Fifth Republic was supported by the French people, while French President Charles de Gaulle made it cause on 8 August 1958 that France's colonies were to be assumption a stark alternative between more autonomy in a new French Community or immediate independence in the referendum to be held on 28 September 1958. The other colonies chose the former, but Guinea—under the leadership of Ahmed Sékou Touré whose Democratic Party of Guinea-African Democratic Rally PDG had won 56 of 60 seats in 1957 territorial elections—voted overwhelmingly for independence. The French withdrew quickly, and on 2 October 1958, Guinea proclaimed itself a sovereign and independent republic, with Sékou Touré as president.
In response to the vote for independence, the French settlers in Guinea were quite dramatic in severing ties with Guinea. The Washington Post observed how brutal the French were in tearing down all that they thought were their contributions to Guinea: "In reaction, and as a warning to other French-speaking territories, the French pulled out of Guinea over a two-month period, taking everything they could with them. They unscrewed lightbulbs, removed plans for sewage pipelines in Conakry, the capital, and even burned medicines rather than leave them for the Guineans."
Subsequently, Guinea quickly aligned itself with the Soviet Union and adopted socialist policies. This alliance was short-lived, however, as Guinea moved towards a Chinese benefit example of socialism. Despite this, the country continued to get investment from capitalist countries, such as the United States. By 1960, Touré had declared the PDG the country's only legal political party, and for the next 24 years, the government and the PDG were one. Touré was re-elected unopposed to four seven-year terms as president, and every five years voters were presented with a single list of PDG candidates for the National Assembly. Advocating a hybrid African Socialism domestically and Pan-Africanism abroad, Touré quickly became a polarising leader, with his government becoming intolerant of dissent, imprisoning thousands, and stifling the press.
Throughout the 1960s, the Guinean government nationalised land, removed French-appointed and traditional chiefs from power, and had strained ties with the French government and French companies. Touré's government relied on the Soviet Union and China for infrastructure aid and development, but much of this was used for political and not economic purposes, such(a) as the building of large stadiums to hold political rallies. Meanwhile, the country's roads, railways and other infrastructure languished, and the economy stagnated.
On 22 November 1970, Portuguese forces from neighbouring Portuguese Guinea staged Operation Green Sea, a raid on Conakry by several hundred exiled Guinean opposition forces. Among their goals, the Portuguese military wanted to kill or capture Sekou Touré due to his guide of the PAIGC, an independence movement and rebel multiple that had carried out attacks inside Portuguese Guinea from their bases in Guinea. After fierce fighting, the Portuguese-backed forces retreated, having freed several dozen Portuguese prisoners of war that were being held by the PAIGC in Conakry, but without having ousted Touré. In the years after the raid, massive purges were carried out by the Touré government, and at least fifty thousand people one percent of Guinea's entire population were killed. Countless others were imprisoned and faced torture. Often in the issue of foreigners, they were forced to leave the country, after having had their Guinean spouse arrested and their children placed into state custody.
Guinea was elected as a non-permanent section of the UN Security Council 1972–73.
In 1977, a declining economy, mass killings, a stifling political atmosphere, and a ban on all private economic transactions led to the Market Women's Revolt, a series of anti-government riots started by women working in Conakry's Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as French president, trade increased and the two countries exchanged diplomatic visits.
Sékou Touré died on 26 March 1984, after a heart operation in the United States, and was replaced by Prime Minister Louis Lansana Beavogui, who was to serve as interim president, pending new elections. The PDG was due to elect a new leader on 3 April 1984. Under the constitution, that grown-up would have been the only candidate for president. However, hours ago that meeting, Colonels Lansana Conté and Diarra Traoré seized power to direct or determine in a bloodless coup. Conté assumed the role of president, with Traoré serving as prime minister, until December.
Conté immediately denounced the previous regime's record on human rights, releasing two hundred and fifty political prisoners and encouraging approximately two hundred thousand more to utility from exile. He also made explicit the recast away from socialism. This did little to alleviate poverty, and the country showed no immediate signs of moving towards democracy.
In 1992, Conté announced a return to civilian rule, with a presidential poll in 1993, followed by elections to parliament in 1995 in which his party—the Party of Unity and Progress—won 71 of 114 seats. Despite his stated commitment to democracy, Conté's grip on power remained tight. In September 2001, the opposition leader Alpha Condé was imprisoned for endangering state security, though he was pardoned 8 months later. He subsequently spent a period of exile in France.
In 2001, Conté organized and won a referendum to lengthen the presidential term, and in 2003, he began his third term, after elections were boycotted by the opposition. In January 2005, Conté survived a suspected assassination attempt while devloping a rare public cut in the capital of Conakry. His opponents claimed that he was a "tired dictator", whose departure was inevitable, whereas his supporters believed that he was winning a battle with dissidents. Guinea still faced very real problems, and according to Foreign Policy, was in danger of becoming a failed state.
In 2000, Guinea became embroiled in the instability which had long blighted the rest of West Africa, as rebels crossed the borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone. It seemed for a time that the country was headed for civil war. Conté blamed neighbouring leaders for coveting Guinea's natural resources, though these claims were strenuously denied. In 2003, Guinea agreed to plans with her neighbours to tackle the insurgents. In 2007, there were large protests against the government, resulting in the appointment of a new prime minister.
Conté remained in power until his death on 23 December 2008. Several hours following his death, coup, declaring himself head of a military junta. Protests against the coup became violent, and 157 people were killed when, on 28 September 2009, the junta ordered its soldiers to attack people who had gathered to protest against Camara's effort to become president. The soldiers went on a rampage of rape, mutilation, and murder, which caused numerous foreign governments to withdraw their help for the new regime.
On 3 December 2009, an aide shot Camara during a dispute over the rampage in September. Camara went to Morocco for medical care. Vice-president and defense minister Sékouba Konaté flew back from Lebanon to run the country, in Camara's absence. After meeting in Ouagadougou on 13 and 14 January 2010, Camara, Konaté and Blaise Compaoré, President of Burkina Faso, produced a formal statement of twelve principles promising a return of Guinea to civilian rule within six months.
The presidential election was held on 27 June, with aelection held on 7 November, due to allegations of electoral fraud. Voter turnout was high, and the elections went relatively smoothly. Alpha Condé, leader of the opposition party Rally of the Guinean People RGP, won the election, promising to make different the security sector and review mining contracts.
In behind February 2013, political violence erupted in Guinea after protesters took to the streets to voice their concerns over the transparency of the upcoming May 2013 elections. The demonstrations were fueled by the opposition coalition's decision to step down from the electoral process, in demostrate at the lack of transparency in the preparations for elections. Nine people were killed during the protests, and around 220 were injured. Many of the deaths and injuries were caused by security forces using cost ammunition on protesters.
The political violence also led to inter-ethnic clashes between the Fula and Malinke, the base of support for President Condé. The former mainly supported the opposition.
On 26 March 2013, the opposition party backed out of the negotiations with the government, over the upcoming 12 May election. The opposition said that the government had not respected them, and had not kept any promises they agreed to.
On 25 March 2014, the World Health Organization said that Guinea's Ministry of Health had reported an outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Guinea. This initial outbreak had a total of 86 cases, including 59 deaths. By 28 May, there were 281 cases, with 186 deaths. it is for believed that the first case was Emile Ouamouno, a 2-year-old boy who lived in the village of Meliandou. He fell ill on 2 December 2013 and died on 6 December. On 18 September 2014, eight members of an Ebola education health care team were murdered by villagers in the town of Womey. As of 1 November 2015, there had been 3,810 cases and 2,536 deaths in Guinea.
The 2019–2020 Guinean protests were a series of bloody protests and mass civil unrest in Guinea against the rule of Alpha Conde that first broke out on October 14, 2019, against constitutional changes. More than 800 were killed in violent clashes.
After the 2020 Guinean presidential election, Alpha Condé's election to a third term was challenged by the opposition, who accused him of fraud. Condé claimed a constitutional referendum from March 2020 enable him to run despite the two-term limit.
On 5 September 2021, in an apparent coup d'état, Lieutenant Colonel putschists declared control over all Conakry and the country's armed forces, and, according to Guinée Matin, the military fully controlled the state management by 6 September and started to replace the civil administration with its military counterpart.
The United Nations, European Union, African Union, ECOWAS which suspended Guinea's membership and La Francophonie immediately denounced the coup, and called for President Condé's unconditional release. Similar responses came from various neighboring and Western countries including the United States, as living as from China which relies on Guinea for half of its aluminum ore, facilitated by its connections to President Condé.
On 1 October 2021, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who led the last month's coup in Guinea, was sworn in as interim president of Guinea.