Guinea will take back 51 mining licenses, the country’s information minister says

Guinea’s information minister said that the country’s military government has taken back 51 mining licenses as part of its larger plan to take back claims or concessions where operations have not started or where permits are not being used properly.

Reuters was the first to report that the government was going to take away the licenses on Thursday.

In a TV speech late Thursday night, Fana Soumah said that Mamady Doumbouya, Guinea’s military leader, had signed the order to take back the bauxite, gold, diamond, graphite, and iron concessions.

The concessions had been “returned free of charge to the state,” Soumah said, listing several parts of Guinea’s mining code as legal reasons for taking back the licenses.

Guinea has the biggest reserves of bauxite, which is the main ore used to make aluminum. Its products are very important to the production of aluminum around the world, especially in China and Russia.

It had already taken away the bauxite licenses of Kebo Energy SA and Emirates Global Aluminium.

“Guinea’s bauxite industry is coming under more and more government pressure,” said Tom Price, head of commodities at investment bank Panmure Liberum.

“We suspect Guinea’s government is consolidating the number of foreign bauxite miners, and forcing the reformed industry to invest in local downstream processing capacity,” he said.

Another analyst who knows a lot about Guinea’s mining industry, who asked not to be named, said that the companies that the decree would touch were not very important.

The Guinean government did not answer when asked about their plans for the next steps.

The decree affects mining companies that got their licenses between 2005 and 2023. Some of the permits were no longer good, while others would have been for decades.

The move shows how difficult it is to do business in West Africa. Since 2020, military governments in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have tighter control over mineral assets to bring in more money.