Flag of Guinea
Three equal vertical bands of red, yellow and green.
What the flag means
Sékou Touré, the first president, explained the colours in a speech and tied each to a word of the national motto, Travail, Justice, Solidarité. Red is the blood of anti-colonial martyrs and the sweat of workers, yellow is Guinea's gold and the African sun, and green is the vegetation and the countryside.
History
The Democratic Party of Guinea, part of the African Democratic Rally, used the pan-African colours from 1954. In 1958 Guinea was the only French colony in Africa to reject membership of the French Community, and it became independent on 2 October 1958. The flag was adopted with the first constitution on 10 November 1958, its vertical layout following the French tricolour.
Rwanda's flag from 1961 to 2001 had the same colours and layout, with a large black letter R added to tell the two apart.
Flags that look like this one
Mali is a plain green, yellow, red vertical tricolour. Senegal adds a green star in the middle. Guinea reverses the order to red, yellow, green. Cameroon is green, red, yellow with a yellow star in the centre.
Flags of Guinea's neighbours
Sources
- Wikipedia: Flag of Guinea
- Flags of the World: Guinea
Last reviewed 24 October 2026. Read how we research flags in our editorial policy, or report a mistake.
