Country · Africa
Guinea
Republic of Guinea
Guinea is a country in Western Africa. Its capital city is Conakry. About 12.4 million people live there, in an area of 245 857 square kilometres.
Picture credit: LamineNoracisse (CC BY-SA 4.0) · LamineNoracisse (CC BY-SA 4.0) · LamineNoracisse (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Vincentyang1912 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Sebastián Losada (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Guinea?
Guinea lies in Western Africa, on the continent of Africa.
It sits in the northern half of the world, roughly 1 225 km from the equator.
Its coastline is about 320 km long.
It shares a border with 6 countries: Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
How big is Guinea?
Guinea covers 245 857 square kilometres.
That is about 6 times the size of Switzerland.
Among the world's countries that makes it the 77th largest.
If everybody spread out evenly, there would be about 50.5 people on every square kilometre.
Who lives in Guinea?
About 12.4 million people live in Guinea.
That is the 74th biggest population in the world.
People here speak French.
They pay with the Guinean franc (Fr).
On average, people born here can expect to live about 46 years.
The land of Guinea
The land in Guinea sits on average 472 metres above sea level.
Its coast runs for about 320 km. Walking it end to end, at twenty kilometres a day, would take roughly 16 days.
It lies inside the tropics, which is the single biggest reason its weather is the way it is.
What makes Guinea different?
Websites from here often end in .gn.
Guinea and the rest of the world
Out of every thousand people alive on Earth, about 2 live in Guinea.
It takes up about 0.18 % of all the land that countries stand on.
Within Africa it is the 31st largest of 54 countries, and the 27th most populated.
That is close to the world average of roughly 60 people per square kilometre.
Guinea and its neighbours
Mali, its largest neighbour, is about 5 times bigger.
Mali has more people: 19.1 million against 12.4 million.
Nature and animals
Of the animals on this site, 1 live wild in Guinea: Chimpanzee. The longest river is the Niger, running 4 200 km from source to mouth.
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons under free licences — every credit is on the page itself and in the picture credits.
Questions children ask
What is the capital of Guinea?
The capital of Guinea is Conakry. It is the city where the country's government works from.
How many people live in Guinea?
About 12.4 million people live in Guinea, which makes it the 74th most populated country in the world. (Source: World Bank, 2018.)
Which countries border Guinea?
Guinea borders Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone — 6 neighbours in total.
How big is Guinea?
Guinea covers 245 857 square kilometres, making it the 77th largest country in the world. That is about 6 times the size of Switzerland.
Which continent is Guinea in?
Guinea is in Africa, in the part called Western Africa.
Where these numbers come from
Borders and outlines: Natural Earth. Names, capitals, areas, languages and currencies: ISO 3166 data (world-countries). Population: World Bank, 2018. Every derived figure on this page (ranks, density, distance from the equator) is calculated from those values.
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