Guinea 2023 — GA Speeches

Mr. President, Excellencies, Heads of Delegation, Mr. Secretary-General,

Before I begin, Mr. President, I would like to extend to you the warm congratulations of the Guinean delegation on your brilliant election to the presidency of the 78th ordinary session of the United Nations General Assembly.

I would also like, before this august assembly, to assure you of my country's support.

I wish, at the same time, to pay well-deserved tribute to your predecessor, Mr. Csaba Kőrösi of Hungary.
To the Secretary-General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, I thank him for the dedication with which he leads our Organization.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

In coming to take part in the work of the 78th ordinary session of our Assembly, I would like to fulfill a duty: that of conveying to you the warm greetings of the sovereign people of Guinea.

My country continues to place its hope in the United Nations to find appropriate solutions to the questions that our world continues to face. In this regard, we believe that the fundamentals that underpinned the creation of our Organization must adapt to the profound changes in our society.

The theme of this session, "Peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability," is timely, evocative, and deserves our particular attention.

An epidemic of coups d'état in Africa. After that of COVID-19, the continent is now struck by that of military coups. Particularly in the French-speaking countries south of the Sahara. Everyone condemns them. Everyone sanctions them. Everyone is troubled by the sudden reappearance of a practice thought to be a thing of the past. And rightly so.

But I would like to say that the international community must have the honesty and the decency not to be content with denouncing only the consequences, but to take an interest in and address the causes.

If coups d'état have multiplied in Africa in recent years, it is precisely because there are very deep-seated reasons. And to treat the ill, one must look at the root causes. The putschist is not only the one who takes up arms to overthrow a regime. I wish it to be clearly understood that the true putschists—the most numerous, who face no condemnation whatsoever—are also those who scheme, who use deceit, who cheat in order to manipulate the constitutional texts so as to remain in power forever. They are the white-collar ones who change the rules of the game mid-match in order to hold onto the reins of the country. These are the most numerous putschists.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am one of those who, one morning, decided to take our responsibilities to spare our country a complete chaos. An insurrectional situation. No political force—all of them completely neutralized at the time—had the courage or the means to put an end to the imposture we were living through. The institutional rectification for which my brothers-in-arms and I took responsibility on September 5, 2021, was merely a consequence of this state of chaos that had ended up fracturing the social fabric and undermining our ability to live together.
In Africa, particularly in West Africa, as our societies evolve, we are witnessing Defense and Security Forces stepping in to take responsibility, actions which raise questions, prompt reflection, and call for action from the international community. The question we must ask ourselves in the face of this situation is: why military transitions now? I do not claim to have all the answers to this question. But I would like to offer some elements of a response based on the experience lived in my country by the people of Guinea, and beyond, by other West African countries facing the same realities.
Without being exhaustive, we believe that the transitions currently underway in Africa are due to several factors, among which we can cite broken promises, the lulling of the people into complacency, and the manipulation of constitutions by leaders whose sole concern is to remain in power indefinitely to the detriment of the collective well-being. Today, African peoples are more awake than ever and are determined to take their destiny into their own hands.
The poor distribution of wealth creates endless inequalities, famine, and misery, which make the daily lives of our populations increasingly difficult. These inequalities are among the causes of events that jeopardize our ability to live together. When a country's wealth is in the hands of an elite while newborns die in hospitals for lack of incubators, it is not surprising that under such conditions we witness transitions aimed at responding to the deep aspirations of the people.
Africa suffers from a governance model that was imposed upon it. A model that is certainly good and effective for the West, which developed it over the course of its own history, but one that struggles to adapt to our realities, our customs, our environment. Alas, the graft did not take... I know that when I say this, many will immediately think: "There's another soldier who wants to strangle democracy," "another soldier who wants to impose his dictatorship."

However, quite clearly, without hypocrisy, without pretense, looking you straight in the eye: we are all aware that this democratic model that you so insidiously and skillfully imposed on us after the La Baule summit in France, almost religiously, does not work. The various economic and social indicators are there to prove it. This is not a value judgment on democracy itself. Believe me. It is an assessment. An observation drawn from several decades of chaotic experimentation with this model in our environment. A period marked only by political jousting. To the detriment of what matters most: the economy.

Allow me to push this exercise in truth a little further. With my short but intense experience of managing a State, Guinea, I have come to better grasp the extent to which this model has above all helped sustain a system of exploitation and plundering of our resources by others. And a very active corruption of our elites. National leaders who were often granted certificates of "democrat" based on their docility or their willingness to sell off their peoples' resources and assets cheaply. Or on how easily they yielded to the pseudo-recommendations and injunctions of certain international institutions serving the great powers.

I must confess, in this regard, that everything I face exceeds all imagination. It is the very same ones who preach democracy, transparency, good governance, who denounce corruption, who dictate the rules. It is they who, off the record, very discreetly and slyly, redouble their pressure to make us surrender our heritage through one-sided contracts.

I understand today certain leaders, some of my predecessors, who—because they had weaknesses, because they were under pressure, or because they had skeletons in their closets, or above all because they had a political agenda—gave in to what was demanded of them. I understand them without approving of them. Some have even reminded me that if I had a political agenda, I would be less at ease carrying out the reforms that my government and I have undertaken.
One thing is certain: we have only one concern—the well-being of the people and our ability to live together. That is our priority. This is why the transition I lead has chosen to proceed methodically, setting clear objectives in a precise order: the social, the economic, and the political.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have placed my uniform at the service of my people. I would be grateful if you would respect this oath—if you would keep us at a respectful distance from the divisions of all kinds that many are trying to foster in our countries. The Sahel is going through one of the most serious crises in its very long history.

But it has the necessary resources to face it. Its legendary sense of diplomacy must be set free so that, together, we may speak to one another without interference. This is why ECOWAS, whose vocation was economic, must stop meddling in politics and instead favor dialogue.

We Africans are tired, exhausted by the categorizations into which some and others wish to confine us. Africa's population is young. It has not known the Cold War. It has not known the ideological wars that shaped the world of the past 70 years.

This is why we find insulting the pigeonholes, the classifications that place us now under American influence, now under British, French, Chinese, Russian, or even Turkish influence.

We are neither pro- nor anti-American, neither pro- nor anti-Chinese, neither pro- nor anti-French, neither pro- nor anti-Russian, neither pro- nor anti-Turkish. We are simply pro-African. That is all. Placing us under the sway of this or that power is an insult, a form of contempt, a form of racism toward a continent of more than one billion three hundred million people.

It is important, in this prestigious and influential assembly, that it be clearly and definitively understood: the Africa of our fathers, the old Africa, is over. With a population of more than one billion Africans, of whom approximately 70% are young people who are entirely free of inhibitions, open to the world and determined to take charge of their own destiny, the time has come to recognize that the structures and rules born after the Second World War—in the absence of our States, which did not yet exist—are obsolete. This marks the end of an unbalanced, unjust era in which we had no say.

The time has come to take our rights into account, to give us our rightful place. But also, and above all, the time has come to stop lecturing us, to stop treating us like children. Rest assured, we are old enough to know what is good for us.

We are mature enough to define our own priorities, to design our own model suited to our identity, to the reality of our populations, to what we simply are.

We would be most grateful if you would trust us and let us steer our own course, as you have allowed in certain other regions of the world—in Asia, in the Near and Middle East, to name but a few. This infantilization has the worst possible effect on an African youth that has come into its own.

I cannot conclude my remarks without highlighting the threats hanging over the West African subregion, which today is gravely exposed to security challenges of every kind, as well as to challenges of development and stability. The populations of the subregion aspire only to a better life, in light of the lessons they have drawn from their history and their desire to live in a space and a world of peace and harmony with the other peoples of the world.
In this context, we are all called upon to undertake a better analysis of the situation, with a view to initiating and pursuing new policies for the benefit of all. The international community must look at Africa with new eyes. It must henceforth engage with Africa in frank cooperation, in a spirit of win-win partnership.

I thank you for your kind attention.