‘Before, the land sustained us’: Who benefits from Guinea’s bauxite wealth?

Bembou Silaty, Guinea – Mamadou Aliou walks through the small village of Bembou Silaty in northwestern Guinea carrying an irresolvable contradiction.The 38-year-old works in the environmental health and safety department for a bauxite mining company, yet he is also an activist striving to improve life in his community, which often means criticising the actions of another mining company in the area.“Before these companies arrived, we cultivated our land, and it sustained us,” Aliou told Al Jazeera.“We could cover our daily needs, especially food. But now, when a piece of land is registered and belongs to a mining company, you have nothing there any more.”The foreign-linked mining companies are part of the global scramble for Guinea’s bauxite. The West African nation holds the world’s biggest reserves of the ore, which is the source material for alumina and ultimately aluminium, a metal essential for car and aircraft frames, windows, wind turbines, and solar panels.Over the past three decades, Guinea has multiplied its bauxite production tenfold. More than a dozen projects of bauxite production are currently ongoing in the country, according to the online cadastre.As the global energy transition demands ever more aluminium, it has placed Guinea in a strategically crucial position. Approximately 75 percent of the bauxite exported by the country over the past decade has ended up in China, which produces 60 percent of the world’s aluminium.Companies from Russia, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates have also established themselves in the country to secure the ore. In Bembou Silaty, an Indian company that began operations in 2019 now holds an exploitation concession until 2034.Located in the prefecture of Telimele (Kindia region), Bembou Silaty has undergone a transformation since bauxite was discovered on its land about five years ago.Yet, on the ground, many lament the cost: Contaminated water, loss of farmland, and a steep decline in agricultural productivity.In the traditional bauxite heartlands of Kindia and Boke, the main roads are in notably good condition, a cut above the rest of the country. Steady jobs in technical roles or transport logistics have created economic opportunities for some Guineans.Yet Bembou Silaty remains a quiet, peaceful village without electricity, and farming methods that are untouched by mechanisation.Less than 2km (1.2 miles) away, however, the lush green landscape and mild climate of the rainy season give way to the electric-powered site of the Indian mining company.There, excavators and trucks laden with bauxite constantly traverse the wide, unpaved roads, built to accommodate the heavy traffic, in a noisy, busy zone where the mining economy bulldozes its way forward.People working in technical roles at the mine can earn up to about $300 a month.For other locals who make a living from farming, most don’t have a regular wage and rely on the yield from their crops.Across Guinea, an estimated half of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihood.Locals in Bembou Silaty say every hectare claimed by mining is a hectare lost to farming, in a country that spent more than $500m importing rice in 2024.“They give you compensation for your land, but it’s not enough, and in the end, it’s mismanaged,” Aliou said.“Within a month or two, someone who received 50 or 100 million Guinean francs ($5,700-11,400) has nothing left. No land, no money. They have to start over, from below zero.”Locals who still own land continue to grow rice, cassava, peanuts and cashews in the village, but they have ever less space and agricultural productivity is falling.The village women have set up an association, “Allawalli” (which means “God help us” in Fula), to work cooperatively.Walking through the alleys of Bembou Silaty, a few houses stand out.They are made of cement, which withstands the rains better than the more common mud-brick homes, though many remain unfinished.Locals say they were built with compensation money.Fatoumata Binta Bah, a neighbour of Aliou’s, comes from a family of farmers. They once cultivated cashews, their livelihood.Then the Indian mining company started up operations and offered them less than 50 million Guinean francs (about $5,700) for their land. That compensation, paid as a lump sum, seemed like a decent amount of money, she says.But now, the money is gone, and their new house is still incomplete.“The land they took from us was productive. That’s what we lived on,” said Bah, 20, as she prepared tea over a fire in the family courtyard.“In the end, it wasn’t enough,” she lamented.The Indian company did not respond to Al Jazeera’s questions on the purchase of land.Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the village, surgical holes drilled into the ground mark where mining companies have tested for bauxite – a reminder to the farmers that the impact on the land is felt even before extraction begins.In a recent report, Djami Diallo, the Guinean minister of the environment and sustainable development, stated that each year, certain companies had their impact studies and evaluation reports rejected for failing to comply with environmental standards.Three or four companies in Boke, Kindia’s neighbouring region that is considered the bauxite capital in the country, were said to be affected. But the minister acknowledged that “just because companies do not meet the conditions to obtain the compliance certificate does not mean that everything stops.”Not all homes in Bembou Silaty, a community of about 5,000, have indoor toilets and plumbing. In the centre of the village, there are communal latrines for those who do not have facilities available in their homes. Showers can be taken in the same place, using a bucket and water collected from the spring.One small gain for the community since the mining company’s arrival is a new water point in the village. The tap serves nearly all the residents. Even Aliou uses it to fill buckets for his household – for cooking and drinking – though he says he knows the water contains iron, as contamination occurs.Still, he considers himself luckier than his friends in the neighbouring village of Koussadji Dow, who rely on now-brown, contaminated river water.Tala Oury Sow, a trader and farmer, washes her cooking utensils in the murky river water – a daily struggle.She starts speaking softly, surrounded by neighbours, but her voice rises to a shout.“Do you think we can live like this?“We had hoped the mining company’s arrival would improve things, but it has gotten worse,” she protested.“Since the mining companies came, we’ve had this problem with the water. The children get sick, and the parents too,” added Mariama Kindi Diallo, a farmer, in her courtyard.“The doctors tell us not to drink the rain or river water. There are no roads, no school, no phone signal. What are we supposed to do? We are asking for help to have a dignified life,” she pleaded, as her family and neighbours nodded in agreement.The Indian company did not respond to requests for comment on these issues.To escape the increasingly difficult conditions in villages like Bembou Silaty, some people leave the rural areas and head to the capital, Conakry.Bauxite mining so dominates Guinea that one can chance upon a driver of one of the trains hauling ore from the mines to the port of Kamsar.Alpha, who did not want his real name published, works for a United States-backed company and provides a window into the immense volume of resources being exported.“We operate six trains of 150 wagons each day,” he said, explaining that the annual target for 2025 was to export 17.5 million tonnes of bauxite.“The government wants to change things, because the profits we make in Guinea right now are small. We need refineries here to increase the state’s revenue,” he added.Alpha lives near the coast, where his job has allowed him to build a house for his family and achieve a standard of living unattainable for most of his compatriots.The government of Mamady Doumbouya, which came to power in a 2021 coup, is attempting to reorganise the mining sector. It is pressing investors to process bauxite within Guinea, ensuring a portion of the value stays in the country.Processing bauxite into aluminium can multiply its price by 37 times.Instability in Iran amid the US and Israel’s war has contributed to rising aluminium prices, which surpassed $3,600 per tonne in April.Doumbouya is set to lead the country for the next seven years, after winning the December 2025 elections with nearly 87 percent of the vote. While opponents view him as illegitimate, many Guineans agree on the need to reform the mining sector.Achieving this, however, requires a huge increase in electricity generation – power that is non-existent in villages like Bembou Silaty and unreliable even in Conakry, where blackouts are frequent when fans and TVs are switched on at night.Guinea is working with neighbouring Senegal on a solution: Using Senegalese gas to generate enough electricity to process its bauxite on African soil. Currently, both countries export raw materials, while jobs and wealth are created elsewhere.More than 3,000km (1,900 miles) away, across the ocean, Spain is also a part of the Guinean bauxite story.Parets del Valles, a municipality of 18,000 people less than 30km (19 miles) from Barcelona, represents the journey’s end.From the town centre to its industrial outskirts, businesses specialising in aluminium are plentiful: Aluminium distribution, carpentry, and window fitting, much of them serving household needs.For Spain, Europe’s largest consumer of Guinean bauxite, more than 90 percent of its imports come from Guinea-Conakry.The aluminium produced there, mainly in the country’s north, feeds the automotive industry and serves both industrial and domestic purposes.Parets is another world compared with the bauxite’s point of origin in Guinea.In Spain, there is light, hot water, paved roads – all the base elements of a decent life. It’s why many say growing numbers of West Africans are arriving in Parets and across the Valles Oriental region. This is part of a broader trend in Catalonia and Spain, according to the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE): The Guinean population has quadrupled in Spain since 2000 – from 2,700 to 11,000 people – and in Catalonia from 1,000 to 4,000.These figures don’t include those who go unregistered.Increasingly, more boats are leaving directly from Guinea, towards the Canary Islands and on to mainland Europe. According to Frontex, the European Union border security agency, more Guineans arrived in the Canary Islands, Spain, in 2023 (2,324) than in the previous 13 years combined. In 2024 and 2025 combined, another 6,000 Guineans arrived.Migrants, predominantly men from Senegal and increasingly from Guinea, come alone, settling where they have contacts and job prospects. The newest arrivals, often very young, spend long hours with their mobile phones as their sole companion – the only tether to the country they left behind.Many left, following the bauxite trail, hoping to find something more in the places where their resources are both enjoyed and exploited.As Aliou, back in Bembou Silaty, says: “If you compare the bauxite we export with what we get in return, the difference is enormous. We gain almost nothing. Just enough to survive.”This article was produced in collaboration with the Catalan association SETEM Catalunya, promoted by the Connect for Global Change consortium and Lafede.cat, and with financial support from the European Union and the Government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya)