(Bloomberg) Guinea Names Mining Executive Mamady Youla as Prime Minister

Youla, 54, an economist, had been serving as general manager of Guinea Alumina Corp Ltd., a bauxite and alumina development company.

“The appointment of Mamady Youla, a high Guinean executive of the private sector, confirms the new impulse given by President Conde to support job creation and the training, and to strengthen Guinean companies,” the office of the presidency said an e-mailed statement.

Youla’s ties to business could give a new dynamism to the economy in Guinea, the world’s largest exporter of bauxite and holder of about 25 percent of the world’s proven reserves of the ore, the main source of aluminum, as well as sizable deposits of iron ore, gold and diamonds.

“Authorities in Guinea did not know how to accelerate investments when the economic situation was favorable,” Youla told Bloomberg News in an interview in Conakry, the Guinean capital, in September.

The statement from Conde office said Youla’s appointment was aimed at strengthening the confidence of Guinea’s economic partners, improving the business climate and accelerating major mining, energy and agricultural projects.

Conde won a second five-year term in the West African nation in October, a result widely disputed by the country’s opposition parties. That election was only the second democratic one in Guinea since 1958, following one in 2010 that was marred by widespread violence and several deaths.

The article was published in Bloomberg Business.