Flag of Guinea

What the flag of Guinea looks like

The national flag of Guinea has three vertical bands of equal width: red at the hoist (the side nearest the pole), yellow in the middle and green at the fly. The proportions are 2:3. There is no emblem, star or writing on it.

Because it is so plain, it is often confused with other red, yellow and green flags, especially the one from Mali, which has the same colors in the opposite order, with green at the hoist. The name also leads to confusion with other countries called Guinea. This page is about the Republic of Guinea, also known as Guinea-Conakry after its capital, Conakry. See the separate pages for Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Papua New Guinea.

Guinea flag meaning and symbolism

The three colors are the Pan-African colors. They were adapted from those of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, the dominant movement at the time of independence, which in turn took them from the flag of Ghana (adopted in 1957). According to Sékou Touré, the first president, they stand for:

• Red for the blood of anti-colonialist martyrs, the labor of the working classes and the wish for progress.
• Yellow for Guinean gold and the sun.
• Green for the country's vegetation and the prosperity arising from its natural resources.

The colors are also read alongside the national motto, Travail, Justice, Solidarité (Work, Justice, Solidarity), with the symbolism of each color corresponding to one component of the motto. The only legislation on the flag states that the stripes must be of equal width.

History of the Guinea flag

Guinea was a French colony, part of French West Africa, and used the French flag. When Charles de Gaulle offered French colonies a choice, Guinea was the only French colony in Africa that refused to remain under the French empire, and it cut all ties with France. Independence came on 2 October 1958, with Ahmed Sékou Touré as the first president.

The flag was adopted shortly afterward, on 10 November 1958. It uses the Pan-African colors, partly as a nod to the flag of Ghana, whose president was a close associate of Sékou Touré, and its stripes evoke the French tricolour. The flag was first published with the country's first Constitution.

The flag later became a point of comparison for other flags. Rwanda's flag in use from 1961 to 2001, a red, yellow and green tricolor, had a large black letter R to tell it apart from the near-identical flag of Guinea.

Flags that look like the Guinea flag

The Guinea flag looks like the flags of Mali, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau. Mali's flag is the same three colors reversed, with green at the hoist. Senegal also has green, yellow and red bands, with a green star in the center. Guinea-Bissau has a red vertical band with a black star, and yellow and green horizontal bands. Guinea's flag is the only one of these that is a plain red-yellow-green tricolor in this order.