7th October, 2021
Guinea’s military junta has named Mohamed Beavogui, a former civil servant and expert in agricultural finance, as prime minister.
He will preside over a promised transition back to democratic rule, following the coup in September.
The transition contours have yet to be defined.
Beavogui, 68, is also the nephew of Diallo Telli, a celebrated Guinean diplomat who served as the first secretary-general of the Organisation of African Unity, now known as the African Union.
Telli was killed by the regime of dictator Sekou Touré in 1977.
Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya, leader of the Sept. 5 putsch against President Alpha Conde, was inaugurated as interim president last Friday.
He promised to organise free and transparent elections but did not say when.
The coup against Conde was the fourth in West and Central Africa since last year, following two putsches in Mali and one in Chad.
He angered his opponents by changing the constitution to allow himself to stand for a third term.
West African states, fearing a contagion effect across the region, agreed last month to impose sanctions on junta members and their relatives.
In the 1980s, Beavogui worked as a civil servant and at the Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee (CBG), one of the country’s leading producers of bauxite.
Guinea possesses the world’s largest reserves of aluminium ore.
He later worked for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and, more recently, as director-general of African Risk Capacity, an African Union agency that helps governments plan for natural disasters.