Kouroussa's position as a river port has made it a historic center for regional trade, much like its larger neighbor Kankan.

The Mandé state around Kouroussa, called in some periods Hamana and in others Koumara, continued as an important trade center and small regional power, squeezed between these forces.

[2] The first known European visitor to the town was the French explorer René Caillié, who passed through the area in June 1827 on his journey to Djenné and Timbuktu.

[5] In the late 19th century French forces appeared in the region just to the north, establishing bases at Kayes, Kita, Mali, Bafoulabé and eventually at Bamako.

[6] In 1893–1894, Commandant Briquelot set up a post at Kouroussa, as it lay along the main line for French fighting with the forces of Samori to the south.

During the colonial period the town was made a main trans-shipment point for commodities coming from French Sudan (today's Mali) due to the construction of the Guinea-Niger railway, which met the river at Kouroussa in 1910, and from which rainy season ship transport could reach Bamako.

The majority of the surrounding population comes from the Malinke and Djallonke ethnic groups, who speak related Mande languages and follow the Muslim religion.

The writer and intellectual Camara Laye (1928–80) grew up in Kouroussa, and his memoir, L'Enfant noir (The Black Child), is in part about his youth in the town.

[21] The Savanna climate in the region around Kouroussa support a wide range of subsistence and cash crop farming, producing rice,[22] groundnuts, onions and millet for sale, as well as supporting larger scale cotton farming and cattle ranching by both locals and semi-nomadic Fula people whose largest local center is in the nearby Fouta Djallon highlands.

Gold collected in Kouroussa is sold on—with almost no regulation or oversight—to larger merchant houses in Bamako, Conakry, and eventually to smelters in Europe.