The coup that ousted Alpha Condé on 5 September 2021 in Guinea has ushered in a period of instability, despite the putschists' reassuring words from the start. There is much at stake over the coming months as leaders jostle for power and political alliances take shape, and pressing questions over the mining industry and international partnerships come to the fore.
The ousted president did not warn his Rassemblement du Peuple de Guinée party when he made a recent bid to remobilise his supporters. Some party bigwigs are annoyed at the move as it jeopardised their own attempts to discreetly revive the erstwhile leading political movement.
The revenues of the company that manages the state's mining interests have increased significantly, particularly in the bauxite sector, and it is now directly selling some of the minerals it extracts, in particular to the Chinese.
Businessman Thierno Madiou Barry has received support from the Ministry of Mines to oust his partner Butti Mohamed al-Qubaisi, despite the intervention of the Abu Dhabi ambassador. However, the new partners Barry claims to have found - Citibank, CRCC and CECC - have not yet formalised their support for his gigantic mining project.
Rumours still abound in Guinea about the aeroplane that received a warm welcome from the military junta when it landed on 20 December in Conakry. The aircraft's owner has not been officially named but clues suggest it belongs to the Indian conglomerate Jindal Steel & Power, which has bases in Africa.
The MEP Marie Arena is considering an emergency resolution on human rights violations allegedly committed in Guinea by the junta led by Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya.
The public investment bank is working with the transitional authorities to advance several projects, including the supply of a system to secure the country's airspace, designed by the defense giant Thales.
The Economic Community of West African States' decision to impose sanctions on Guinea's junta was the result of a fragile consensus and is far from being unanimously backed by its member countries.
Morissanda Kouyaté recently travelled to New York and Washington for the United Nations General Assembly. The foreign minister made the most of his trip to boost Conakry's ties with a number of Gulf countries and improve its fraught relationship with the Biden administration.
The leader of the transition recently tasked his foreign minister with reviewing the performance of Guinea's diplomatic representatives abroad, his aim being to improve the efficiency of the country's embassies.
The US-Canadian mining magnate is grappling with political uncertainty in Monrovia and Conakry. While waiting for things to settle down, he has suspended most of his works and has put hundreds of employees on standby.
The creation of Beijing's new iron ore purchasing arm, China Mineral Resources Group, led by Baowu Steel executives, is likely to entail changes for Chinese state firms involved in the two consortiums that own the colossal Guinean deposit.
The president of the Guinean transition has pledged that the oft-postponed trial relating to the terrible repression of 2009 will finally take place by this September. A decision that contrasts with the favourable treatment reserved by the transitional authorities for Colonel Claude Pivi and former president Moussa Dadis Camara.
The former Rio Tinto exec and current chairman of the Chamber of Mines, who is also the deputy managing director of the Chinese-Singaporean-Guinean consortium, has been leading the negotiations on the Simandou iron ore project.
Guinea's stalwart partner under Alpha Condé, Russia has striven to protect its interests since Col Mamadi Doumbouya came to power in a coup last year. But its diplomats and businessmen have suffered several setbacks and are very short of contacts within the new set-up.
A few weeks after announcing their intention to again appoint Mohamed Ibn Chambas as mediator for Guinea, ECOWAS foreign ministers are expected at their 3 July summit to reiterate this position
The adviser to the president's secretary-general travelled to Paris shortly after the Eurosatory arms fair to assess how the event had gone and ascertain what progress was being made in negotiations to equip the Guinean army.
ECOWAS leaders are making no secret of their irritation with the head of the Guinean transition Mamadi Doumbouya, who has disregarded their calls for a short transition period. He believes his country has sufficient cards in its hand to weather any potential sanctions.
Moussa Magassouba, appointed head of the Guinean Ministry of Mines and Geology after the September 2021 coup, coordinates the beating heart of Guinean economy. However, he has been subject to frequent criticism from both civil society organisations and members of the government.
The call to demonstrate on June 23 by the Front National Pour la Défense de la Constitution (FNDC) resulted from negotiations held at the beginning of the month between the organisation and key leaders from the opposition.
After the head of the ousted Alpha Conde's government, along with three other former ministers, was detained earlier this month to face charges of diverting state funds, his supporters got busy preparing his defence, putting together a crack legal team and trying to rally a bevvy of West African heads of state to his cause.
The interim prime minister and his staff want to improve the extractive sector's respect for the environment through stricter enforcement of relevant contractual obligations.
For the past few weeks, the transitional president of Guinea, Col Mamady Doumbouya, has been quietly making changes to further strengthen his authority over Guinea's armed forces. This mix special forces appointments and dismissals elsewhere could trigger the first upset within the junta's security apparatus.
Sacked by the junta in October 2021, Namory Traoré, Alpha Condé's influential chief of staff from 2013 until the coup d'état, is expected to be appointed Guinea's ambassador to Morocco soon.
The current leaders in Conakry are throwing themselves into a race to regain control of illegally acquired public assets, targeting political opponents, businesses and multinationals alike. State agencies are pushing each other out of the way to get ahold of the seized assets.
Although most of Guinea's ambassadors were recalled in early February, none of them has so far returned to Conakry. Interim president Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya is nevertheless pursuing his efforts little by little to change his country's diplomatic line-up abroad.
Opposition leaders Cellou Dalein Diallo and Sidya Touré each made separate trips to Europe last week to make their voices heard and garner support for their efforts aiming to influence the transition process initiated by the junta in Guinea.
France has in recent weeks relaunched its military cooperation with Guinea, which was put on hold after last September's coup d'état.
Having appointed Ibrahima Kassory Fofana as interim president of the RPG on 7 March, the party leadership is due to meet again on 10 March as several party officials are challenging the appointment of the former prime minister.
Guinea's honorary consul in Los Angeles, Jordan Garcia, is preparing a visit by Mexican investors and business leaders to Conakry. In the wake of the September coup d'état, the delegation is keen to find out more about potential business opportunities in the country.
Cardinal Robert Sarah has been very active in his native Guinea since he left the Vatican last year. He is imposing himself, via very public sermons and behind-the-scenes moves, as a key player in the transitional phase that is meant to lead to democracy after a coup in September last year.
Who owns the Gulfstream IV plane that Alpha Condé, his personal doctor and two bodyguards boarded in the early afternoon of 17 January to travel from Conakry to Abu Dhabi?
Already bent on recovering several Guinean state assets, Mamady Doumbouya's junta also wants to expropriate two large estates built by private developers on Conakry's coastline, arguing that the land was improperly leased from the state.
For the past few weeks, the cost of staples such as bread, rice and sugar has been rising. In an effort to maintain his popularity, the new president has promised to cut import taxes, but the move could backfire.
Though member countries of ECOWAS once again demanded Alpha Condé be authorised to leave the country at its 12 December summit, Mamadi Doumbouya's junta is keeping him under house arrest as they look, among other issues, into his finances.
In November, Guinea's mining agency ANAIM presented its operations and projects to new president Mamady Doumbouya. MD Lamine Cissé highlighted the money it is losing due to the shortcomings of the public electricity company and the army's demands.
The international community's mistrust of Guinea's post-coup regime is a boon for Iran. Tehran, badly in need of both iron and allies, is trying to cosy up to Mamady Doumbouya's junta and to acquire stakes in the country's mines.
French major TotalEnergies has abandoned blocks A4 and C2 in Guinea's offshore, amid political instability and the need to reduce its exploration costs due to the pandemic.
Having arrived in power after staging a coup against Alpha Condé, Mamady Doumbouya has now put the finishing touches to his government. But the mining portfolio, the most important in the country, has been divested of some its key prerogatives, ensuring that the junta leader remains in firm control of the engine room of the Guinean economy.
Addax Energy has bagged a six-month extension from the junta led by Mamady Doumbouya on its exclusive contract to import petroleum products to Guinea.
Since mid-September, several of the diplomatic representations in Conakry have complained about the actions of Guinean security forces who are said to have carried out searches of their diplomatic vehicles that they consider 'unfriendly'.
After having been in the running to be an African Union mediator in Chad last year, ex-Nigerien president Mahamadou Issoufou is again on a list of such names, this time for the role of ECOWAS special envoy to Guinea following the fall of Alpha Condé.
Fanta Cissé's name is being strongly put forward in the Guinea junta's entourage to take the coveted post of head of diplomacy.
Deprived of an official role and sidelined by Pope Francis, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, the former prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship, is engaging with the CNRD, which forcibly took over Conakry on 5 September.
The post of mines and geology minister, which involves overseeing Guinea's biggest economic sector, is highly coveted. With efforts currently under way to form a first post-coup government, it is attracting a lot of applicants.
Canadian mining group Iamgold, which has been exploring Guinea's Karita gold deposit since 2017, applied for a new exploration permit just a few days after the coup which overthrew President Alpha Condé.
The fall of Alpha Condé, one of Mohammed VI's most reliable allies in West Africa, has caught Morocco off guard and fuelled concerns about its many assets and interests in Guinea.
As it adjusts to post-coup Guinea, the local mining logistics provider UMS, headed by Fadi Wazni, is also facing an arbitration where the firm of French lawyer William Bourdon is representing a client who wants to regain control of a plane both parties are claiming ownership of.
The organisation's heads of state are meeting in Accra on 16 September over the situation in Guinea. Some members are pushing for a 6-month civilian-led transition fiercely opposed by the junta, which hopes to keep control over the transition.
Prior to the coup that toppled Alpha Condé, the government had been actively engaged in responding to the IMF, which had expressed reservations over the reliability of the tax declarations of mining companies active in Guinea, and of Chinese operators in particular.
The Guinean businesswoman is trying to approach the military leaders who overthrew Alpha Condé on 5 September to win their support over her four-year dispute with Chinese group TBEA. She wants payment for her services in making contacts for TBEA in Guinea, where it is developing a hydropower dam and a bauxite mine.
Ahead of the diplomatic mission dispatched by ECOWAS to Conakry on September 10, secret negotiations over the departure of Guinea's president Alpha Condé, who is being held by the coup leaders, have been taking place.
The arrival of a military junta in Conakry opens a new stage, the outcome of which remains uncertain, in the saga of the 2019 agreement between Beny Steinmetz's group and Alpha Condé over the Simandou and Zogota iron ore projects.
Turkey's diplomats have been hard-wired to reject military rule ever since the failed 2016 coup attempt in Ankara, but they now find themselves having to make pragmatic choices with Guinea's new leaders to maintain an air of influence.
Since Alpha Condé was ousted, most of his officials seem willing to cooperate with the junta. But some officials, including those from the defence ministry, have gone further and appear to have given their full backing to Col Mamady Doumbouya.
Breaking news published on 07/09/2021 at 10 a.m. - The president of Ivory Coast Alassane Ouattara spoke at length on the telephone with coup leader Mamady Doumbouya, who overthrew president Alpha Condé the day before.
The ousting of President Alpha Condé by Col Mamady Doumbouya has not, as yet, affected the country's mining operations. In company headquarters, mining executives are waiting for the junta's next moves and making plans to manage the transition.
Breaking news published on 05/09/21 at 7:40 p.m. - Less than 24 hours after the coup that ousted Alpha Conde, ECOWAS presidents started consulting with each other ahead of an extraordinary summit planned shortly to decide what stance to adopt on Guinea and whether or not to apply sanctions.
