Kissidougou was reportedly founded by Mansa Dankaran Toumani, who was driven out of Dakajalan by Soumaoro Kante in the early 13th century.

This massive influx of Sierra Leonian refugees placed great stress on the government of Guinea as well as upon international aid organizations' ability to provide a stable, secure refuge.

Early analyses by French colonial botanist Auguste Chevalier attributed the increase in fire-setting to greater movement and trade in the post-occupation period.

[6] More recent studies, often funded by international environmental programs, have attributed deforestation to factors such as urban development, population growth, commercialization, and monetarization of the rural social environment.

Each of these analyses contributed to the emerging narrative that Kissidougou once had an extensive forest cover, which was maintained by low population densities and by a functional social order whose regulations controlled and limited people’s inherently degrading land and vegetation use.

Historically, policy has focused on reducing upland farming, controlling bushfires, regulating timber felling, and attempting forest reconstitution through tree planting.

In 1995, anthropologists James Fairhead and Melissa Leach challenged the degradation narrative that the inhabitants of Kissidougou are responsible for the decrease in forest cover.

[6] Historical evidence, including aerial photographs from 1952-53, descriptions and maps from the early French military occupation (1890s-1910), oral histories, and personal accounts, indicate that the vegetation pattern and forest cover in Kissidougou has remained relatively stable or even increased during these periods.

Fairhead and Leach further cite earlier documentary sources from the 1780s-1860s to demonstrate that the forest cover is increased as a result of human intervention, rather than degraded.