About Conakry

According to a legend, the name of the city comes from the fusion of the name "Cona", a wine and cheese producer of the Baga people, and the word "nakiri", which means the other bank or side. Conakry was originally settled on tiny Tombo Island and later spread to the neighboring Kaloum Peninsula, a 36 km long strech of land 0.2 to 6 km wide. The city was essentially founded after Britain ceded the island to France in 1887. In 1885, the two island villages of Conakry and Boubinet had less than 500 inhabitants. Conakry became the capital of French Guinea in 1904 and prospered as an export port, particularly after a (now closed) railway to Kankan opened the large scale export of groundnut from the interior. In the decades after independece, the population of Conakry exploded, from 50,000 inhabitants in 1958 to 600,000 in 1980, to over two million today. Its small size a relative isolation from the mainland, while an advantage to its colonial founders, has created an infrastructural burden since independence.