Note: The menu shows the 36 African countries where Africare has worked, not the other African countries.

 

Guinea (Map courtesy of The World Factbook)

Guinea

REGION: West Africa
CAPITAL CITY: Conakry
POPULATION: 9,202,000
LAND AREA: The size of Pennsylvania and Ohio combined

With great mineral wealth, Guinea should be among Africa's richest nations. It has major hydropower, agricultural and mineral resources (for example, Guinea is the world's second-largest bauxite producer and has almost half of the world's bauxite reserves). Yet decades of internal instability ― combined with spillover violence and the influx of up to 500,000 refugees from conflicts in neighboring Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone ― have left the Guinean people, today, among the poorest in West Africa. Some 30 years of post-independence authoritarian rule began giving way in the mid-1980s. At that time, the socialist experiment was abandoned. Democratic elections were first held in 1993. Despite those structural changes, the lot of the Guinean poor has remained unchanged or even worsened. Several massive workers' strikes have taken place in recent years.

 

Country Stats

Life expectancy: 54.8 years (USA: 77.9)

Under-5 child mortality: 150/1,000 live births (USA: 7/1,000)

HIV prevalence, ages 15-49: Not available (USA: [0.4 - 1.0]%)

Physicians per 100,000 people: 11 (USA: 256)

People undernourished: 24% (USA: 0%)

People with access to safe drinking water: 50% (USA: 100%)

Adult literacy: 29.5% (USA: 99%)

Annual income, one way to look at it (GDP per capita, PPP US$): $2,316 (USA: $41,890)

Annual income, another way to look at it (GDP per capita): $350 (USA: $41,890)

People living on less than $1 a day: Not available (USA: 0%)

(HIV prevalence statistics, UNAIDS. All other statistics, 2007/2008 Human Development Report, UNDP)

 

(Updated, Dec. 18, 2007)