President Mamadi Doumbouya signed two separate ordinances into law on Friday, July 3, both published the same day in the Official Gazette.
The first approves the amended and consolidated mining convention covering the Boffa Nord and Boffa Sud bauxite deposits, along with the construction and operation of an alumina refinery at Boffa. The text binds the Guinean state to several Chalco entities: Chalco Hong Kong Limited, Chalco Guinea Company and Chalco Guinea Port. The ordinance writes into Guinean law the agreement signed with Chalco in late May: a 1.2 million tonne per year alumina project, with total investment estimated at $1.68 billion, of which $1.12 billion is earmarked for refining infrastructure. The Guinean state holds an initial 5% stake, with an option to rise to 35%.
The second ordinance covers two financing agreements for the 225 kV Guinea-Mali power interconnection: an additional loan from the African Development Fund worth 16.25 million units of account, signed in February, and a grant from the same lender’s climate action window worth 4.875 million units of account.
What this changes: the Boffa refinery becomes the third alumina project in Guinea’s pipeline, after the SPIC refinery expected in 2027 and the Winning Consortium Alumina Guinea refinery planned for 2028. It is also Chalco’s first refinery outside China, and a test of the company’s industrial model abroad, built on more than a decade running the Boffa bauxite mine. Formalizing the deal through an ordinance rather than a standalone commercial agreement anchors it in Guinean law and gives both sides firmer legal footing.
The energy component follows a separate logic, that of sub-regional power integration. But its publication on the same day as the mining convention points to a broader agenda: securing both local resource transformation and the power infrastructure to support it, in a country where electricity access remains uneven. World Bank data put Guinea’s electricity access at 51.1% of the population in 2023, against 92.5% in urban areas and just 25.7% in rural ones.
Worth watching: the actual implementation timeline for the Boffa refinery, which adds to an already crowded pipeline, and whether available power generation keeps pace with the new processing capacity coming online.