Formerly a colony of France, Guinea became an independent republic in 1958. It was mapped during the 1950s by the French Institut Géographique National (IGN) who by 1957 had completed a 1:200,000 scale cover in 34 sheets. These one-degree sheets were issued as a Carte Régulière in the north and east of the country, with 40 m contours. Elsewhere sheets were not photogrammetrically produced, and exist as a provisional edition compiled in the 1930s and 1940s. 1:50,000 scale mapping was also undertaken in the 1950s by IGN, with 85 sheets covering the west of the country and the area of Fouta Djallon. Maps are on the UTM projection, Clarke 1880 ellipsoid, and have 20 m interval contours.
After independence, the survey and mapping activities of IGN ceased, and little progress was made until 1977, when a technical cooperation agreement with the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) resulted in new aerial photography of the whole country being flown between 1977 and 1979. The Guinean National Geographical Institute (current name Institut de Topographie et de Cartographie de Guinée (ITCG)) was established in 1980 to work with JICA. About 350 1:50,000 scale photomaps were derived from this photography, with the intention subsequently to produce conventional line maps to match the specification of the IGN mapping. Only 16 such sheets were produced before the agreement with JICA came to an end. Subsequently, IGN has again supported the mapping of Guinea through French aid programmes, and further sheets were published in 1988 and 1991-2.
Soviet military topographic mapping for Guinea exists at the following scales: 1:1,000,000 (5 sheets, complete coverage, published in 1986); 1:500,000 (12 sheets, complete coverage, published 1984-1985); 1:200,000 (52 sheets, complete coverage, published 1983-1985) and a city (1:10,000) topographic map of Conakry published in 1978. These products are available in paper, digital raster and digital vector GIS formats from East View Geospatial.
Geological mapping is the responsibility of the Ministère des Mines et de la Géologie, but no earth science mapping has been published from Conakry. The sheet covering Guinea (No. 1) in the Carte géologique de l’Afrique occidentale 1:2,000,000 was published in 1960.
A 1:100,000 scale, two-sheet soil and soil suitability map of the Fouta Djallon region was published by the British Directorate of Overseas Surveys in 1964. Some sheets of a planned nine-sheet 1:1,000,000 scale Carte de la végétation de l’Afrique tropicale occidentale by Guy Roberty were published by the Institut Français de Recherche Scientifique pour le Développement en Coopération (ORSTOM) in 1962-64. ORSTOM has again become active in Guinea and has an office at Conakry (ORSTOM Guinée). In 1993, it published a two-sheet map of coastal and marine sediments at 1:200,000 scale.
IGN published a photomap of Conakry in 1982, and issued a new edition of an earlier 1:1,000,000 scale general map of the country in 1992 in the Pays et villes du Monde series. A useful, but undated, wall map of administrative areas and transport infrastructure, is published by SONECI, Conakry. The reverse of the map has four smaller scale thematic maps designed for educational use.
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