Guinea - Geography
Guinea's land area is about the same as that of the United Kingdom. Guinea is located on the Atlantic Coast of West Africa and is bordered by Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Mali, Côte dIvoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The country is divided into four geographic regions: a narrow coastal belt (Lower Guinea); the pastoral Fouta Djallon highlands (Middle Guinea); the northern savannah (Upper Guinea); and a southeastern rainforest region (Forest Guinea). The Niger, Gambia, and Senegal Rivers are among the 22 West African rivers that have their origins in Guinea.
Guinea extends southeast in a crescent from the Atlantic coast of West Africa. Its topography varies from coastal plains to inland mountains that account for about 60 percent of the land area. Several of the region’s major rivers, in particular the Niger, Senegal, and Gambia, all originate from these highlands, making Guinea the “water tower” of West Africa. These rivers drain vast arable plains, and upstream offer important potential for hydroelectric energy. Guinea’s forests are now mostly limited to a few mountainous areas in the south (Ziama and Nimba), and to gallery forests along watercourses.
The country has a varied terrain that ranges from wide coastal marshes and an inner lying plain along the Atlantic Ocean to high central plateaus, a region of broad savannas in the east, and a combination of mountains and plains in the southeast. Less than one-third of the country's total area is considered suitable for cultivation. Soils are relatively poor, the result in many instances of adverse actions by man over many centuries. Guinea is fortunate in other natural resources, however, having large deposits of bauxite and iron ore and considerable hydroelectric potential.
Guinean landscapes also have the largest extent of lateritic plateaus, called bowé, creating natural clearings of treeless meadows. They are a common feature in the north and west of the country. In addition, Guinea is endowed with huge deposits of mineral resources. It has the largest deposits of bauxite and iron ore in the world and is a gold and diamond producer. Thanks to these mineral resources, Guinea has the potential of being one of Africa’s richest countries. Its Atlantic shoreline supports a large-scale fishing industry and has developed large commercial harbors, such as Conakry and Kamsar.
In western Guinea, two ecoregions characterize some 300 km of Atlantic coastline and coastal plains — the Plaines Côtières (PC – Coastal Plains) and Zones de mangroves (ZM – Mangrove Zones). Eastward of the coastal lowlands the land rises, at times in the form of spectacular escarpments, into two major ecoregions, the Plateaux de Basse Guinée (PBG – Lower Guinea Plateaus) and the Zone de Savane et de Montagne (ZSM – Savanna and Mountain Zone). Guinea’s famous interior highlands are captured in two ecoregions, the scenic Massifs Montagneux du Fouta Djallon (MMFD – Mountainous Blocks of Fouta Djallon) and the Contrefort du Fouta Djallon (CFD – the Foothills of the Fouta Djallon). Both the MMFD and the CFD are made of rugged high plateaus, often capped by laterite (bowé), and dissected by deep valleys.
Most of Guinea’s rivers originate here, fed by the abundant rainfall of the highlands. Descending to the east, the Niger River and its tributaries have fashioned the low, rolling landscapes of the Haut Bassin du Niger (HBN – Upper Niger Basin) with its broad plateaus and alluvial plains once covered by extensive savannas and gallery forests. This relatively dry part of Guinea falls into the Sudanian climate zone.
The south part of the country is home to Guinea’s forest zone (ZPF – Zone Pré-Forestière and PF – Zone Forestière), whose ecoregion names derive from the Upper Guinean forest that formerly covered large swaths of this region. The Zone Forestière is made of a ridge, which is a spur of the Fouta Djallon highland, extending as far south as Mount Nimba (1,752 m). The forest is now limited to the high valleys and eastern flanks of these mountainous zones (CM). Although prone to erosion on steeper slopes, the soils of the Zone Forestière are highly fertile, supporting cultivation of food and cash crops, such as coffee, tea, cocoa and rubber.
Guinea is the source of over one-half of West Africa's principal rivers and many of their tributaries, which rise either in the Fouta Djallon or the Guinea Highlands of the Forest Region. The two highlands, moreover, form the drainage divide between the upper Niger River basin and the rivers that flow westward through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia to the Atlantic Ocean. In the north the Fouta Djallon also separates the watersheds of the Niger, Gambie (in The Gambia, known as the Gambia), and Sénégal rivers. The Gambie actually rises in the Fouta Djallon, and a major tributary of the Sénégal, the Bafing (in reality the upper course of the Sénégal), also has its origin there.
The fan-shaped system of the Niger River, which originates in the Guinea Highlands, drains over one-third of the country's total area including most of Upper Guinea and the Forest Region. In the west Lower Guinea is crossed by many usually short rivers, which originate either in the Fouta Djallon or in its foothills. Among the more important for navigation purposes are the Rio Nunez, which debouches through the Rio Nunez estuary; the Fatala, emptying into the Rio Pongo estuary; and the Mélikhouré, near the Sierra Leone border. In the mid-1970s the Konkouré River, situated north of Conakry, had little navigation value but had important potential for hydroelectric power development.
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