Category : Simandou
Conakry hosted the Guinea-Ivory Coast Construction Sector Economic Forum on June 10 and 11. Two days of B2B meetings, sectoral workshops and plenary sessions between Guinean and Ivorian construction operators. The initiative came from the Ivorian Construction and Public Works Group (GIBTP), whose president Lamine Koné led the delegation. The signal is clear: Abidjan is looking at the Guinean market, and Conakry needs what Ivorian companies have already built.
The context explains the urgency. The Simandou 2040 program, formally adopted by the National Transitional Council in March 2026, sets a target of $150 billion in GDP by 2040. That implies an economic transformation that goes well beyond mining extraction: infrastructure, energy, logistics, industry. Construction sits at the center of that sequence. No serious industrialization gets built without roads, buildings, and civil engineering capacity at scale.
That is where the forum’s most concrete question came in. Infrastructure Minister Facinet Sylla flagged that a significant portion of the heavy equipment used to dig the tunnels and lay the 650 kilometers of Simandou’s railway track is still on Guinean soil. That equipment could leave. Guinea has a window to redirect it toward new national infrastructure projects. The question put to BTP operators in the room: who can mobilize it, and under what structure?
The forum partly answers that question. The presence of Ivorian firms that have delivered major infrastructure programs in Ivory Coast in recent years is not incidental. These operators have the experience, the certifications, the teams. Guinea has the project pipeline, the needs, and potentially the machinery. The partnership framework is taking shape.
Ivory Coast’s ambassador to Guinea, Issifou Coulibaly, noted that bilateral trade grew 78% between 2023 and 2024, with Ivorian exports to Guinea exceeding $180 million. Ivory Coast is now one of Guinea’s main suppliers within ECOWAS. Construction fits into that dynamic, but with a different logic: this is no longer just about trade flows, but about building shared capacity.
Guinea was also invited to participate as guest of honor at the Abidjan Infrastructure Expo in September 2026. That diplomatic signal confirms that the Conakry forum is not a standalone event. It is part of a longer sequence between the two countries around the infrastructure sector.
What to watch: the contracts that come out of this forum, Guinea’s ability to absorb Ivorian skills transfers, and above all the Simandou equipment question. If Guinea manages to retain that machinery and integrate it into a new wave of national construction projects, the forum will have delivered something concrete. If the equipment leaves, the window will have closed.