Guinea

Guinea reaches 2026 at a genuine economic inflection point. Real GDP grew 5.7% in 2024, and the World Bank projects growth averaging above 10% across 2026-28 as the Simandou iron-ore complex ramps — though forecasts diverge (the AfDB models a more conservative ~5.8% for 2026). Inflation is contained, printing 3.7% in August 2025, the BCRG held its policy rate at 9.75% in December 2025, and foreign reserves rose to roughly US$3.6 billion. Nominal GDP was about US$25.3 billion in 2024 for a population near 15.4 million.

The thesis is singular and structural: Guinea is becoming a tier-one mineral exporter. The roughly US$23 billion Simandou project — the world's largest greenfield iron-ore development, partnering the state with Rio Tinto, a Chinalco/Baowu-led Chinese consortium, and Winning Consortium Simandou — was inaugurated on November 11, 2025, with its first commercial shipment leaving in December 2025 and a designed capacity up to 120 Mtpa across a 552km-plus trans-Guinean railway and new port. Atop this sits the world's largest bauxite reserves (~7.4 billion tonnes), with exports surging 36% in the first half of 2025 to a record 99.8 million tonnes, around three-quarters destined for China. The IMF estimates Simandou alone could lift GDP by roughly 26% within five years.

The defining risk is political legitimacy layered over commodity and geopolitical concentration. General Mamadi Doumbouya, who seized power in the September 2021 coup, won a constitutional referendum in September 2025 that cleared his candidacy, then took the December 28, 2025 presidential election with 86.72% amid opposition fraud allegations, and was inaugurated as civilian president on January 17, 2026. The economy's fate is tethered to iron-ore and bauxite prices and to heavy Chinese offtake dependence, with the current-account deficit near 9% of GDP during the Simandou construction phase.