Other Notes on West Africa

I’ve written about Nigeria, Benin, The Gambia, Mauritania, Ghana, Guinea, and the Ivory Coast in West Africa. I also traveled to Togo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Mali, but I don’t think I have enough interesting things to say about each one to justify a full post. So I’m going to do a quick, bullet-point summary of notes on all these leftover countries in one essay. But first, I’ll go over some bigger West African trends that I couldn’t figure out how to fit into individual country entries.

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Notes on Guinea

I spent about nine days in Guinea, mostly in Conakry and being driven around the countryside. My notes here have a heavier bend toward personal experiences than usual, though I do go into the basics of Guinean history.

As always, Martin Meredith’s Fate of Africa is a major source for me, but I also got a lot out of Tom Burgis’s The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa’s Wealth. Other assorted sources are linked within.

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