Guinea held legislative and communal elections on Sunday 31 May, completing what authorities described as the final stage of a return to constitutional order following a military takeover in September 2021. Nearly seven million voters were called to the polls to elect 147 members of a new National Assembly as well as councillors for 375 local communities across the West African nation. The vote passed without major incident, but turnout was strikingly low throughout the day.

A significant portion of the opposition boycotted the polls. The Forces Vives de Guinée — a coalition of civil society organisations and several opposition parties, including some dissolved by the authorities in March — urged voters to stay home, arguing the elections were neither free nor fair. "The results are known in advance," said one resident in the Camayenne district of the capital, Conakry, who declined to vote. "There is no point going to the polls." At some polling stations in the city, only two or three voters had appeared by midday. Officials called for transparency, while supporters of the governing authority argued that a strong parliamentary majority was needed to drive economic development. Some observers also noted that the timing of the vote — just days after the Eid al-Adha holiday, when many Guineans travel to their home villages — may have further suppressed participation.

The backdrop to this fragile political moment is Guinea's extraordinary mineral wealth, and the persistent question of who truly benefits from it. Guinea holds the world's largest known reserves of bauxite, the ore from which aluminium is refined — a metal central to everything from aircraft and car frames to wind turbines and solar panels. Over the past three decades, the country has multiplied its bauxite output tenfold, with roughly 75 percent of exports flowing to China. Companies from Russia, the United States, India, and the United Arab Emirates have also secured footholds in the country.

Yet in villages like Bembou Silaty in northwestern Guinea, the boom has brought as much hardship as opportunity. Farmland absorbed by mining concessions has left families without their traditional livelihoods, while compensation payments — often lump sums of under $12,000 for a family's entire agricultural holdings — are quickly exhausted. Contaminated rivers and limited access to clean water have become daily realities. "Before these companies arrived, we cultivated our land, and it sustained us," said Mamadou Aliou, a 38-year-old who works in mining but also advocates for his community. "When a piece of land belongs to a mining company, you have nothing there any more."

The disconnect between Guinea's resource wealth and the living conditions of its rural population gives the political uncertainty particular weight. An estimated half of Guineans depend on agriculture, yet the country spent more than $500 million importing rice in 2024. Economists and civil society voices argue that until bauxite revenues are channelled into infrastructure, refining capacity, and local development — rather than exported as raw ore — elections alone will do little to change life on the ground for communities bearing the environmental costs of extraction.