The government of the Republic of Guinea led by Col. Mamady Doumbouya has reached an agreement with West African regional mediators to conduct new elections in early 2025.
The regional bloc known as ECOWAS has spent more than a year negotiating with Col. Mamady Doumbouya’s government following the September 2021 coup and had imposed sanctions on the junta leadership.
The junta initially proposed a three-year transition, which was rejected by the regional mediators who already had obtained two-year transition deals after similar coups in both Mali and Burkina Faso. Guinea’s two-year clock starts in January, with elections then due a little over two years from now according to AP reports.
For some, the news was bittersweet as demonstrations protesting the duration of the transition in Guinea have turned deadly, including three killed Thursday.
Guinea became the second country hit by a recent coup in West Africa, a little over a year after Mali’s military junta overthrew that country’s democratically elected ruler. Since then, Burkina Faso has seen two coups of its own.
Burkina Faso and Mali already have agreed with ECOWAS on election dates — Mali’s is scheduled to be held by March 2024, but the situation in Burkina Faso is now in doubt after the latest coup there.
