Finlay Rogers

History of Guinea Conakry, and Early Struggle for African Liberty Finlay Rogers

History of Guinea Conakry, and Early Struggle for African Liberty. Sekou Toure an African might, a Political diversity. sacred because it must be born in our spirits on the very day that foreign domination takes hold in a country. That is to say that Africa's vocation for independence is not born today, but on the very day when foreign powers extorted from African populations the right to the total exercise of their own sovereignty............ Ahmed Sékou Touré, Conakry, 26 October 1958On 2 October 1958, Guinea became the first of France's colonial territories in Sub-Saharan Africa to declare its independence. It did so without having fired a shot, a matter of considerable pride to Guinea's leaders. However, it also achieved this status against the wishes of its former colonial master and then weathered an administrative and diplomatic assault by France which seemed to the Guineans to have been designed to drive them to their knees. France's hostility towards the new state one that had come into being lawfully by taking advantage of an offer extended by the metropole was hardly the action of a colonial power responding to its independence "without a stumble," as Charles-Robert Ageron asserts. It was all the more mystifying and enraging to Guinea's leaders because they consistently expressed their desire to maintain the closest possible ties with France