Guinea is a traditional name for the region of Africa that lies along the Gulf of Guinea. It stretches north through the forested, tropical, regions and ends at the Sahel.
Historically, this region was one of the first parts of sub-Saharan Africa to trade with Europeans. The large amount of trade in ivory, gold, and slaves made the region wealthy, with a number of centralized kingdoms developing in the 18th and 19th centuries. These were much smaller than the large states of the wide open Sahel, but they had far higher population densities and were more centralized and technologically advanced. These kingdoms meant that the region put up more resistance to European incursions than others, and much of Guinea was not colonized until the very end of the 19th century.
The name comes from a Berber languages via Portuguese, it originally meant "land of the blacks."
Guinea is often subdivided into Lower Guinea, one of the most densely populated regions of Africa covering southern Nigeria, Benin, Togo and into Ghana; and Upper Guinea, which is far less densely populated and stretches from the Côte d'Ivoire to Guinea-Bissau.
European traders in the region subdivided the region based on its main exports. The eastern portion by Benin and Nigeria was named the Slave Coast. What is now Ghana was called the Gold Coast, a name later given to a British colony in the area. West of this was the Ivory Coast, still the name of the nation in that region. Furthest west, the area around modern Liberia and Sierra Leone was referred to as either the Pepper Coast or the Grain Coast.
It borders on the Atlantic Ocean in the west, on Senegal in the north, and on Guinea in the east and south.
Guinea A West African country with an Atlantic coast, bounded on the north by Senegal and Mali, on the east by Côte d'Ivoire, and on the south by Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Oriental faunal region The area that encompasses India and Asia south of the Himalayan–Tibetan mountain barrier, and the Australasian archipelago, excluding New Guinea and Sulawesi.
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