Description & Facts: On our missions trip to Africa, some video of driving in Conakry. Also, Ron (the missionary) is describing the culture of polygamy there. According to a legend, the name of the city comes from the fusion of the name "Cona", a wine and cheese producer of the Baga people, and the word "nakiri", which means the other bank or side. Streetmap of the city centre of Conakry, 1981.Conakry was originally settled on tiny Tombo Island and later spread to the neighboring Kaloum Peninsula, a 36-kilometer (22 mi) long stretch of land 0.2 to 6 kilometers (0.12 to 3.7 mi) wide. The city was essentially founded after Britain ceded the island to France in 1887. In 1885, the two island villages of Conakry and Boubinet had fewer than 500 inhabitants. Conakry became the capital of French Guinea in 1904 and prospered as an export port, particularly after a (now closed) railway to Kankan opened the large scale export of groundnut from the interior. In the decades after independence, the population of Conakry exploded, from 50,000 inhabitants in 1958 to 600,000 in 1980, to over two million today. Its small size and relative isolation from the mainland, while an advantage to its colonial founders, has created an infrastructural burden since independence.