Red, Gold & Green: The Land of Guinea-Bissau Quiz

Answer: Hope

The green of the Guinea-Bissau flag can also be said to represent forests and agriculture. The red represents the blood of martyrs and the gold represents wealth, or the Sun. The black star on the red bit represents African unity. Red, green and gold are traditional Pan-African colours and can be found on the flags of other countries such as Benin, Cameroon and Ghana; the Guinea-Bissau flag was inspired by the Ghanaian flag.

Answer: Tropical savannah

Bissau, the largest city of Guinea-Bissau, is reasonably wet for a tropical savannah climate, but has very little rainfall between December and April. A tropical savannah climate is also known as a tropical wet and dry climate, and areas with such climates are at increased risk of drought. They also features grasslands, or savannahs, rather than forests.

Answer: Senegal and Guinea

This is where things can get a little confusing. Guinea, as well as being the name of a country, is also the name of a region in West Africa which lies along the Gulf of Guinea. It also includes Benin, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Togo, Senegal, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea (which is further south), the Gambia, and parts of Nigeria and Cameroon. Guinea-Bissau was formerly known as Portuguese Guinea, but had 'Bissau' affixed to its name to avoid confusion with the country of Guinea, formerly known as French Guinea. (For similar reasons, Guinea is sometimes known as Guinea-Conakry.) Guinea-Bissau is bordered by Guinea to the south and east, and Senegal to the north, with the Atlantic Ocean on its west side.

Answer: Bissau

Bissau, as the largest city in Guinea, is an autonomous region. It is also a port, and Guinea-Bissau's main administrative and military centre.

Guinea-Bissau is divided into three provinces. The regions of Gabu and Bafatá are in the Leste (East) province. Cacheu, Oio and Biombo are in the Norte (North) province, and Quinara, Bolama and Tombali are in the Sul (South) province. Each region is split into sectors.

Answer: Bissagos Islands

The Bissagos Islands - or Bijagós, as they are known locally - are located in the Bolama region in the south of Guinea-Bissau, and collectively, they are a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. They contain a rich variety of wildlife, including hippos, Nile crocodiles and marine turtles.

There are 88 islands in total, with only around 20 islands being populated all year round; subsistence fishing and farming are the main industries. Although tourists do come to the islands via Senegal, tourism is not a major earner due to a lack of infrastructure and communication links.

They have also been used as a tropical disease research site by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Diseases, although the isolated nature of the islands also puts them at less risk of contamination than more populous areas.

Answer: Rubies

Agriculture is the primary industry in Guinea-Bissau; as well as fish, it is also a major producer of mangoes, cashew nuts and ground nuts. Mining mainly revolves around building materials such as limestone and gravel, though bauxite, gold, diamonds and petroleum can also be found there.

Political instability and frequent government turnovers have had a devastating effect on the country's economy; it is also used as a transition point for cocaine trafficking between Latin America and Europe. One UN official even stated that the drug trade had turned Guinea-Bissau into a 'narco-state', due to government corruption and drug traffickers bribing government officials to stop them interfering. There have been cases of villagers finding bricks of cocaine being washed up, and mistaking them for paint or fertiliser.

Answer: Geba

The Geba River, known as the Kayanga in Senegal, also runs through Senegal and Guinea; it rises in Guinea, and enters the Atlantic Ocean in Guinea-Bissau. It is Guinea-Bissau's longest river, and an important trade route for the country; Bissau is situated in its estuary. One of its tributaries, the Corubal, forms part of the border between Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.

Answer: Lagoas Cufada Natural Park

Lagoas Cufada Natural Park is Guinea-Bissau's largest wetlands reserve and its first protected area, established in 2000. It is located between the Buba and Corubal Rivers, in the Quinara region, and is home to around 250 species of bird, as well as white hippos, gazelles, African buffalo and hyenas.

Although there are only a small number of chimpanzees in Guinea-Bissau, as both deforestation and hunting are threats to the chimpanzee population, they can be found in the park and make their nests in oil palm trees.

Answer: Bolama

Bolama is one of the Bijagós Islands, and its main town is also called Bolama and is the capital of the region of the same name. Of all the islands, it is the closest to the Guinea-Bissau mainland. The town of Bolama is twinned with Faro in the Portuguese Algarve.

A bit of colonial history: the Portuguese and the British disputed over the ownership of Bolama, as the British wanted to annex the island to Sierra Leone, but the area was awarded to Portugal in 1870 by a commission chaired by Ulysses S Grant, and was made the capital of Portuguese Guinea. It was used as a port and trading centre, and later as a stop for seaplanes; a monument near the old Governor's Palace, in the shape of a broken wing, commemorates an Italian seaplane crashing during an aborted attempt to fly from Rome to Brazil. Lack of fresh water put colonists off living there, and it was replaced by Bissau as capital in 1942. Nowadays, Bolama is a biosphere reserve, and the abandoned buildings are home to colonies of fruit bats.

Answer: Guinea-Bissau Creole

The creole spoken in Guinea-Bissau is a type of Portuguese creole, or crioulu, and is similar to the creole of Cape Verde. Portuguese is the official language, used for administration, politics and educational programming, but Guinea-Bissau Creole is used for entertainment, literature and trade.

A dialect of Guinea-Bissau Creole is also spoken in southern Senegal, particularly in the former Portuguese colony of Casamance, and the Gambia. The three main dialects of Guinea-Bissau Creole are Bissau and Bolama, Bafatá, and Cacheu-Ziguinchor.