Djiba Diakité presents Simandou 2040 doctrine to investors
By the AFREEQUE newsroom, based on Africaguinée
Guinean presidency chief of staff Djiba Diakité outlined at the Simandou Mining Summit Conakry’s doctrine of “infrastructure pooling” and co-development under the Simandou 2040 programme. He cited the Transguinean Company, where Western and Asian partners share costs and risks, on the second day of the summit, according to Africaguinee.
Guinean presidency chief of staff Djiba Diakité outlined on Wednesday 11 November to investors at the Simandou Mining Summit the cooperation method Conakry is applying to the Simandou 2040 programme, during the second day of the summit being held in Conakry from 11 to 14 November. Speaking on behalf of the Simandou Strategic Committee, which he chairs, he defended the pooling of infrastructure between mining operators, the Guinean media outlet Africaguinée reports.
“For decades, each operator wanted to build its mine, its railway, its port. The result: nothing was done,” Djiba Diakité said. According to him, the breakthrough came in 2022 with President Mamadi Doumbouya’s directives, through the pooling of costs and risks within the Transguinean Company (CTG), where Western and Asian partners work side by side. He summed up this approach with the phrase “interdependence of interests”.
The minister put the state’s new position in the project’s infrastructure at at least 15% in the railways, 15% in the ports and 15% in the future steel plant, which is intended to enable the local processing of ore on Guinean soil. “The state, which held nothing yesterday in the logistics infrastructure,” now sits on the boards of directors of these companies, he added.
The intervention came the day after the opening of the summit, on 11 November, one year after the launch of the iron mine, and the arrival in Conakry of a Malian ministerial delegation. The Simandou 2040 programme had been presented by the head of state, who promised a transformed Guinea within 15 years thanks to the project.
