Extraction / Logistics & Infrastructure
Mme Ly runs four logistics structures from Conakry. The freight operation she has just closed is drawing the attention of international investors. An interview with an executive who looks back on one of the most complex air freight operations executed in West Africa, and on what it reveals about the Guinean logistics market.
She personally supervised the unloading of 19-metre iron ore crushers transported by Antonov 124 to Conakry. The operation required a complete rerouting: the cargo was refused for loading in the United Kingdom for security reasons and had to transit through Denmark before reaching Guinea. The availability of the aircraft, one of the largest cargo planes in the world, was itself a challenge: tensions between Russia and Ukraine have reduced access to the fleets of Russian operators, forcing Nimba Plus to negotiate with Ukrainian crews.
At the head of Nimba Plus and Groupe Mondial Tours since 2015, she oversees four entities covering international logistics, freight, tourism and catering. She has represented United Parcel Service Inc. in Guinea for twenty years, a fact that is little known even within the sector.
Reading the operation: what the Antonov 124 says about the Guinean market
Asked about the scope of the operation, she brings the analysis back to market structure. “The success of this operation has attracted the interest of international investors and partners,” she observes. Logistics demand in Guinea is driven by mining projects, with Simandou at the head, the largest untapped iron ore deposit in the world. That demand now far exceeds what major international operators have structurally deployed on the market, creating a space that Guinean SMEs capable of operational execution are filling.
The operation itself illustrates the equation. The chartering of an Antonov 124, a strategic cargo aircraft with a payload capacity of 120 tonnes, is not a routine logistics decision. It signals that the cargo transported could not be moved by maritime route within an acceptable timeframe, and that no alternative aircraft of comparable capacity was available on standard terms. The UK loading refusal and the Denmark rerouting reflect a level of geopolitical scrutiny that did not exist five years ago, and to which West African logistics operators must now adapt.
A UPS partnership that Mme Ly wants to transform
The relationship with UPS, built over two decades, currently operates on an agency model. The General Manager is pushing for an evolution towards a direct implantation of the American group in Guinea, a market she considers under-evaluated by the major international operators. Her reading is explicit: Simandou alone will generate, over its operational life, freight flows of a scale that justifies a permanent presence by a major international operator. The same logic, in her view, applies to players such as FedEx and Aramex, which have not yet established a direct presence on the Guinean market.
The timing of this transition remains to be decided on the American side. The decision will depend less on the individual willingness of operators than on the pace of Simandou’s ramp-up and the depth of the demand it generates. “The market can no longer be managed from a distance,” she says.
The return freight problem
A structural imbalance weighs on the sector’s profitability: cargo planes leave Guinea empty. Exports are not yet organised at a scale sufficient to fill the return rotations, which raises the cost of each inbound operation. Developing an export capacity is identified as a three-year priority, for Nimba Plus, but also for the Guinean economy as a whole.
This imbalance is not just a logistics question. It reproduces the broader commercial structure of Guinea (raw materials exported by maritime route, capital goods imported by air) at the freight level. As long as it persists, the unit cost of inbound air logistics remains high, and the competitiveness of the Conakry hub against Abidjan, Dakar and Lagos is mechanically constrained. Resolving that equation is, in her view, the structural condition for the next stage of the Guinean logistics market.
Diversification: a 22-hectare ecotourism project
In parallel, Groupe Mondial Tours is developing a 22-hectare natural and ecotourism site in partnership with the IFC. The project, the Kilissi Waters in Kindia, is currently in the consolidation phase. The financial terms have not been made public.
The IFC’s involvement, given its track record in West African infrastructure financing, suggests that the structuring is being approached at institutional level rather than as a marginal initiative. The group’s operational base in mining logistics is thus being used to develop a parallel positioning in tourism and natural assets, a diversification logic that matches the model of several West African groups that have used mining flows to extend their sectoral footprint.
The gender question in logistics
Operating in two male-dominated sectors, logistics and mining, she turns this into an operational lever rather than a communications subject. Nimba Plus places women in strategic positions and conducts internal awareness work. “Companies are now looking for inclusion,” she observes, adding that rigour and the management of complexity are concrete necessities in industries where margins for error are narrow.
The reading is less ideological than operational: inclusion is not a communications subject but a question of finding the people who can manage operations where error margins are narrow. The fact that an SME led by a female executive successfully executed one of the most complex air freight operations of the year in West Africa is not, on this reading, a representational signal. It is operational evidence that the pool of leaders capable of managing strategic logistics in West Africa is broader than the established narrative suggests.
The journey
Trained in accounting and finance in London, she returned to Guinea earlier than planned to take over the family business. Four structures to manage in parallel, four children to raise: a fact she mentions not as a concession, but as a management data point. Nimba Plus is based in Conakry, Guinea.
Outlook: three indicators to monitor
Three indicators will measure, over the next eighteen months, whether the trajectory carried by Mme Ly consolidates into a structural repositioning or remains that of an isolated operation.
The first is the trajectory of the UPS partnership. The current agency model has lasted twenty years. The transition she is pushing for, a direct UPS implantation in Guinea, will be a binary signal: either it materialises, in which case Conakry consolidates as a node in the West African logistics network, or it does not, in which case the existing model continues to capture value through intermediation. The decision rests with UPS, but is a function of the Simandou timeline.
The second indicator is the resolution of the return freight imbalance, identified as a three-year priority. The actual development of Guinean export capacity (agricultural products, processed minerals, manufactured goods) at a scale sufficient to fill return rotations will determine whether the unit cost of West African air freight to and from Conakry can be reduced.
The third indicator is the operational ramp-up of the Kilissi Waters project in Kindia. The closing of the financial terms and the operational launch of the site will indicate whether the diversification thesis is being executed or remains at the announcement stage.
The interview gives a situated reading: that of an executive who operates from Conakry, who has demonstrated execution capacity on an operation of international complexity, and who identifies with precision the structural gaps that the Guinean logistics market must close to scale. The narrative she carries is not one of individual success; it is that of a market that has crossed a demand threshold without yet crossing the corresponding supply threshold. The next eighteen months will tell whether this gap is closing.