Guinea Prefectures (original) (raw)

Buy data Donate

Updates:

Sorin Cosoveanu found the 2014 census report with final results (source [3]).

ISO 3166-2 issued an update on 2014-10-30 that changes the status of Conakry special zone to governorate, and of the seven former governorates to administrative regions.

Update 12 to Geopolitical Entities and Codes (formerly FIPS 10-4) is dated 2013-06-30. It implies that the prefectures have been decommissioned, leaving the seven governorates and administrative area as the current primary subdivisions (now called administrative regions and governorate, respectively). I have not found any confirmation that the prefectures were suppressed. I've added the FIPS codes to the table under "Further subdivisions."

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter number II-1, dated 2010-02-03, changes the names of the seven governorates by deleting the prefix "Gouvernorat de" from each one.

ISO 3166-2 has come out in a second edition, dated 2007-12-15. Previously, ISO had designated Conakry as a city, and coded it as if it were on the administrative region level. Now its status is listed as zone sp�ciale (special zone), and it's on the same level as the prefectures. I've added the code for Conakry to the table below.

When "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries" was written, the current version of the ISO 3166-2 standard erroneously assigned a code of KD to both Kindia and Koundara prefectures. In order to get unique codes, I arbitrarily changed the code for Kindia to KI. Later, ISO 3166-2 was updated to fix the anomaly, and the fix they adopted was to change the code for Koundara to KN. In 2004, I added text from the book to the website. In so doing, I accidentally used the old ISO codes with my arbitrary correction as HASC codes. Later, I changed the HASC codes to be consistent with the ISO codes.

ISO 3166-2 Newsletter Number I-2 was published on 2002-05-21. It contains two changes for Guinea. The status of Conakry is changed from gouvernorat (governorate) to ville (city). According to FIPS, Conakry is a capitale d'�tat - zone sp�ciale (national capital - special zone). The other change is to the code for Koundara. The original ISO 3166-2 standard had incorrectly assigned the same code, KD, to both Kindia and Koundara. The update changes the code for Koundara to KN.

Change Notice 7 to FIPS PUB 10-4 is dated 2002-01-10. It reflects changes that are already shown in the book "Administrative Subdivisions of Countries", and in ISO standard 3166-2.

Country overview:

Guinea was known as French Guinea in 1900. In 1943, it and seven other French colonies were combined to form French West Africa (Afrique Occidentale Fran�aise, capital Dakar). Guinea became independent on 1958-10-02.

Other names of country:

1. Danish: Guinea
2. Dutch: Guinee, Republiek Guinee (formal)
3. English: Republic of Guinea (formal), French Guinea (obsolete), Guinea-Conakry (variant)
4. Finnish: Guinea
5. French: Guin�e f, R�publique f de Guin�e (formal), Guin�e fran�aise (obsolete)
6. German: Guinea n
7. Icelandic: G�nea
8. Italian: Guinea f
9. Norwegian: Guinea, Republikken Guinea (formal)
10. Portuguese: Guin� f, Guin�-Conacri, Rep�blica f da Guin� f (formal)
11. Russian: Гвинейская Республика (formal), Гвинея
12. Spanish: Guinea, Rep�blica f de Guinea f (formal), Guinea Francesa (obsolete)
13. Swedish: Guinea
14. Turkish: Gine Cumhuriyeti (formal)

Origin of name:

Tuareg aginaw: speechless people, applied by Berbers to blacks speaking unknown tongues

Primary subdivisions:

Guinea is divided into 34 pr�fectures. FIPS calls them r�gions administratives (administrative regions). ISO calls Conakry a gouvernorat (governorate).

Further subdivisions:

See the Subprefectures of Guinea page.

The prefectures are subdivided into 335 sous-pr�fectures (subprefectures) and five communes (the communes are in Conakry: Dixinn, Kaloum, Matam, Matoto, and Ratoma). These, in turn, are subdivided into districts and sectors. The prefectures are also grouped into seven governorates or regions, and one administrative zone, Conakry.

Before ~1988, the prefectures were grouped into these "supra-regions":

Territorial extent:

The UN LOCODE page for Guinea lists locations in the country, some of them with their latitudes and longitudes, some with their ISO 3166-2 codes for their subdivisions. This information can be put together to approximate the territorial extent of subdivisions.

Origins of names:

Conakry: local word konakri: across the water

Change history:

1. 1904: �les de Los transferred from Sierra Leone to French Guinea by cession.
2. 1946-10-07: Status of French Guinea changed from French colony to French overseas territory.
3. 1980: Name of Youkoukoun region changed to Koundara.
4. 1985: Coyah region split from Dubr�ka; Koubia and L�louma regions split from Lab�; Lola region split from Nz�r�kor�; Mandiana region formed from parts of Kankan and Siguiri.

Other names of subdivisions:

1. Conakry: Conacri (Portuguese); Konakry (obsolete)
2. Gu�ck�dou: Gu�k�dou (variant)
3. Koundara: Youkoukoun, Youkounkoun (obsolete)

Sources:

1. [1] R�partition de la population par R�gion et Pr�fecture selon le sexe cites as its source Direction Nationale de la Statistique - RGPH 1996 (retrieved 2013-08-07). RGPH is the General Census of Population and Housing.
2. [2] "Le red�ploiement des enseignants en Guin�e ", by Alamah Conde and Mamadou Aliou Sow, has 1998 population estimates in Annexe 1 (retrieved 2004-11-12).
3. [3] Decree for Publication of the Final Results of the 2014 Census (retrieved 2016-04-09).