Guinea Highlands

The Guinea Highlands is a densely forested mountainous plateau extending from central Guinea through northern Sierra Leone and Liberia to western Côte d'Ivoire. The highlands include a number of mountains, ranges and plateaus, including the Fouta Djallon highlands in central Guinea, the Loma Mountains in Sierra Leone, the Simandou and Kourandou massifs in southeastern Guinea, the Nimba Range at the border of Guinea, Liberia, and Côte d'Ivoire, and the Monts du Toura in western Côte d'Ivoire.

Geography

In Guinea they are known as Dorsale Guinéenne. The highest peak in the region is Mount Bintumani in Sierra Leone, at 1,945 metres (6,381 ft). Other peaks include Sankan Biriwa (1,850 metres (6,070 ft)) in Sierra Leone and Mount Richard-Molard (Mount Nimba) (1,752 metres (5,748 ft)) on the border of Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire. The highlands mostly lie between 300 and 500 metres (980 and 1,640 ft) above sea level.

The Guinea Highlands are the source of many of West Africa's rivers, including the Niger River, West Africa's longest river, the Senegal and Gambia rivers, and the rivers of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Maritime Guinea, and western Côte d'Ivoire.

New Guinea

New Guinea (Tok Pisin: Niugini; Dutch: Nieuw-Guinea; Indonesian: Papua or, historically, Irian) is a large Island in the South West Pacific region.

It is the world's second-largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 785,753 km², and the largest wholly within the southern hemisphere.

The island is divided among two countries: Papua New Guinea to the east, and Indonesia to the west.

Names

The island has been known by various names.

The name Papua was used to refer to parts of the island before contact with the West. Its etymology is unclear; one theory states that it is from Tidore, the language used by the Sultanate of Tidore, which controlled parts of the island's coastal region. The name came from papo (to unite) and ua (negation), which means not united or, territory that geographically is far away (and thus not united).

Ploeg reports that the word papua is often said to derive from the Malay word papua or pua-pua, meaning 'frizzly-haired', referring to the highly curly hair of the inhabitants of these areas. Another possibility, put forward by Sollewijn Gelpke in 1993, is that it comes from the Biak phrase sup i papwa which means 'the land below [the sunset]' and refers to the islands west of the Bird's Head, as far as Halmahera. Whatever the origin of the name Papua, it came to be associated with this area, and more especially with Halmahera, which was known to the Portuguese by this name during the era of their colonization in this part of the world.

Papua New Guinea

Coordinates: 6°S 147°E / 6°S 147°E / -6; 147

Papua New Guinea (PNG; /ˈpæpuə njuː ˈɡɪniː, ˈpɑː-, -pju-/, US /ˈpæpjuə, pɑːˈpuːə/;Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini; Hiri Motu: Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an Oceanian country that occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and its offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. Its capital, located along its southeastern coast, is Port Moresby. The western half of New Guinea forms the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua.

Papua New Guinea is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world; 848 languages are listed for the country, of which 12 have no known living speakers. Most of the population of over 7 million people live in customary communities, which are as diverse as the languages. It is also one of the most rural, as only 18 percent of its people live in urban centres. The country is one of the world's least explored, culturally and geographically, and many undiscovered species of plants and animals are thought to exist in the interior.

Guinea

Coordinates: 11°N 10°W / 11°N 10°W / 11; -10

Guinea ⁱ/ˈɡɪni/, officially the Republic of Guinea (French: République de Guinée), is a country in West Africa. Formerly known as French Guinea (French: Guinée française), the modern country is sometimes referred to as Guinea-Conakry in order to distinguish it from other parts of the wider region of the same name, such as Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Guinea has a population of 10.5 million and an area of 245,860 square kilometres (94,927 sq mi).

Guinea is a republic. The president is directly elected by the people and is head of state and head of government. The unicameral Guinean National Assembly is the legislative body of the country, and its members are also directly elected by the people. The judicial branch is led by the Guinea Supreme Court, the highest and final court of appeal in the country.

Guinea is a predominantly Islamic country, with Muslims representing 85 percent of the population. Guinea's people belong to twenty-four ethnic groups. French, the official language of Guinea, is the main language of communication in schools, in government administration, in the media, and among the country's security forces, but more than twenty-four indigenous languages are also spoken.

Western Highlands

Western Highlands may refer to: