Late Colony
1939-1958 		History of West Africa Guinea since 1984




Era Sekou Toure



In the 1958 referendum, Guinea opted for outright, full independence. SEKOU TOURE became the young republic's first president.
He established a One-Party-State, the party being the PDG, established in 1952. Socialism became state ideology; in 1961 Guinee Conakry cut diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R, looking for aid and advice to the PR China instead. In 1960 Sekou Toure had all books on economy and administraion burnt; in 1967 he instigated a Guinean version of the Cultural Revolution. In 1973, Guinee Conakry nationalized the Bauxite mining industry.
Relations with France were poor from the outset, as France tried to punish Guinee Conakry for not joining the French Union in 1958. In 1965, Guinee Conakry severed diplomatic relations with France; they were restored in 1975.
Guinea and Ghana established a loose federation in 1958 (Mali joined in 1961) which held until Ghana's president Kwame Nkrumah was ousted in a coup in 1966. Nkrumah then went to Guinea, where Toure made him titular co-president.
In 1972, an invasion of Guinean exiles, operating from Portuguese Guinea, failed.
While the country experienced population growth, production fell and the population impoverished; in 1990 the U.N. Quality of Life Index ranked Guinee Conakry bottom in the world. In 1977 the state administratuion decreed that all farming products had to be sold to state agencies; market women revolted in protest.
Sekou Toure died in 1984; a week after a military junta took over, suspended the constitution the PNG had adopted in 1982, dissolved the PDG and her affiliate organizations and ended the experiment of socialism in Guinee Conakry.



EXTERNAL
FILES 		Timeline, from BBC News
Global History of Currencies, click : Guinea Bissau
Historical Population Statistics : Guinea Bissau, from Population Statistics at Univ. Utrecht
History of Guinea, from Countries Quest, from Lonely Planet
A Short History of Guinea, from Election World
Guinee Conakry, from Francophonie, in French
Background Notes : Guinea, from U.S. Dept. of State
Republic of Guinea : Aredor, from Trivalence
A Cultural Revolution in Africa : The Role of Literacy in the Republic of Guinea since Independence, by Dianne White Oyler
DOCUMENTS Flag, from FOTW
Banknotes, from Ron Wise's World Paper Money
REFERENCE



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2001, last revised on March 27th 2005

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