On November 11, 2025, Guinea formally launched operations at the Simandou iron ore project, the largest integrated mining and infrastructure investment in sub-Saharan Africa. On December 2, 2025, the first shipment of 200,000 tonnes of ore departed the newly constructed Morebaya port on the Atlantic coast, bound for China. By February 2026, shipping frequency had risen from one vessel every three weeks to approximately weekly departures. At the same time, Guinea’s bauxite sector set its own record: exports surged 23% in the third quarter of 2025, with annual production projected at around 180 to 199 million tonnes for the year, up from 145 million tonnes in 2024. Export earnings for the first half of 2025 alone reached approximately $8.9 billion.
Guinea now operates two distinct mineral corridors. They differ in geography, maturity, and capital architecture. They share one destination.
Two corridors, one direction
The bauxite corridor runs northwest. The Boké region, where the Société Minière de Boké, the Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée, Chalco, and other operators are concentrated, feeds into a coastal port network that expanded from five to nine active terminals in 2025 alone. Kamsar, Boké, Dapilon, and Katougouma handle the bulk of shipments. In 2025, the SMB-Winning Consortium added a 135-kilometre railway connecting the Santou mines to the Port of Dapilon, part of a $3 billion investment plan. China receives 74% of Guinea’s bauxite output. Chinese bauxite imports rose 26.4% to 200.5 million tonnes in 2025, with Guinea supplying the dominant share.
The iron ore corridor runs southeast. The Simandou mountain range in Forest Guinea, straddling the Beyla and Kérouané prefectures, holds an estimated 3 billion tonnes of reserves at over 65% iron grade, among the highest in the world. The Trans-Guinean railway, a 650-kilometre heavy-haul line, connects the mine to Morebaya port on the Atlantic. The Compagnie du TransGuinéen, co-owned by both mining consortia and the Guinean state, operates the shared logistics backbone. Blocks 1 and 2 are developed by the Baowu Winning Consortium Simandou, in which China Baowu Steel Group raised its stake to 51% in January 2026. Blocks 3 and 4 are operated by SimFer, a joint venture between Rio Tinto at 53% and Chinalco at 47%. The Guinean state holds 15% equity in both operating companies and in CTG. Total infrastructure cost exceeds $20 billion, financed primarily by Chinese state banks and the companies themselves.
Both corridors are largely Chinese-financed and China-oriented. That is not a contested observation. It is the structural starting point for any analysis of what Guinea controls.
What the infrastructure map reveals
Guinea holds the world’s largest bauxite reserves, estimated at 24.7% of global deposits. The country has consistently grown raw bauxite exports over consecutive years, posting a 14% increase in 2024 and a further surge in 2025. But raw bauxite is a low-margin commodity. The Guinean government is aware of this. Since 2022, Conakry has applied increasing pressure on bauxite operators to build local alumina refineries, threatening and in some cases executing license revocations. In August 2025, Guinea stripped Emirates Global Aluminium’s Guinea Alumina Corporation of its concession, subsequently transferring it to the newly established state-owned Nimba Mining Company. In May 2024, the government revoked 129 mining licenses, citing non-compliance and underutilisation.
Construction began in December 2025 on the WCAG alumina refinery in the Boké prefecture, backed by the Winning Consortium, with a planned capacity of 1.2 million tonnes per year and a capital investment exceeding $1.2 billion. A separate refinery backed by China’s State Power Investment Corporation is also under construction, with completion expected by late 2027. Currently, Guinea operates only one alumina refinery, Rusal’s Friguia plant. The gap between the volume of ore exported and the volume processed locally is the central policy tension in the bauxite corridor.
That tension is not easily resolved. Between 2025 and 2027, more than 30 million tonnes per year of new alumina refining capacity is scheduled to come online globally, concentrated in China, Indonesia, and India. Shanghai alumina prices fell 48% during the first ten months of 2025, reflecting mounting oversupply. Guinea’s push for local refining is a strategic objective colliding with an unfavorable market window. Refinery investment in Guinea also requires parallel investment in power infrastructure. The SPIC project includes a 250-megawatt power plant, with 100 megawatts designated for the national grid. Without dedicated energy capacity, alumina production is operationally unfeasible at scale.
The Simandou corridor presents a different set of variables. The project is new, the revenue is not yet material, and the ramp-up will take years. Combined exports from Blocks 1 to 4 are projected at 15 to 20 million tonnes in 2026, rising toward an intermediate target of 60 million tonnes annually before an eventual ceiling in the range of 120 million tonnes. The IMF projects that Simandou could expand Guinea’s GDP by more than 25% by 2030 and contribute roughly 3.4% of GDP annually through the 2030s. Guinea has announced a sovereign wealth fund, the Fonds de Richesse Simandou, capitalized at approximately $1 billion and expected to launch in 2026.
The question the fund does not yet answer is how revenue flows from a project in which Guinea holds 15% equity, with infrastructure financed by counterparts who hold the remainder.
The corridor as regional infrastructure
The Trans-Guinean railway has a dimension that extends beyond Guinea’s mineral exports. The 650-kilometre line connects the Forest Guinea region to the Atlantic coast and significantly shortens the transit distance for landlocked Sahelian neighbors. Mali in particular, whose access to ports in Dakar and Abidjan requires longer overland routes, could benefit from an alternative Atlantic corridor. The railway could, in principle, carry bauxite and other minerals from broader regional origins, positioning Guinea as a logistics hub for the Sahel rather than solely a mineral exporter. That prospect depends on governance arrangements for CTG that currently do not exist for third-country access, on political relations between Guinea and its neighbors, and on infrastructure investments at border connection points that have not yet been made.
The regional dimension is a real possibility. It is not a current operational fact.
What to watch
Three variables will determine how the two corridors perform over the next three years. First, whether Guinea’s alumina refinery program delivers operating plants before 2028 or stalls against energy constraints and market headwinds. Refinery completion would shift the value calculus of the bauxite corridor; continued delays would confirm that raw export volume remains the dominant logic. Second, how the Simandou ramp-up translates into fiscal revenue. The gap between projected GDP impact and actual government receipts will depend on transfer pricing, infrastructure cost recovery arrangements, and the terms under which the Fonds de Richesse Simandou operates. Third, whether the Trans-Guinean railway attracts the investments required to function as a sub-regional corridor. The infrastructure exists. The governance framework for regional access does not yet.
Guinea has moved from being the world’s largest bauxite exporter to becoming an active iron ore producer within a single year. What it does with that transition in the next three years will determine whether its two corridors generate the kind of durable economic position that the ore quality alone would suggest is available.