""I Will Do Anything to Stay Here"- What a Just Energy Transition Means to Communities at Risk from Bauxite Mining in Guinea", 24 November 2025

A handful of multinational-owned firms, including CBG [Compagnie des bauxites de Guinée], dominate Guinea’s bauxite sector...Guinea supplies 22 percent of the world’s bauxite. Bauxite mining has contributed billions of dollars to the Guinean government’s budget...

CBG is a joint venture controlled by the U.S. aluminum giant Alcoa, Australian-British miner Rio Tinto, a privately held firm called Dadco with interests in Germany, and the Guinean government...

CBG’s mining concession is nearly 3,000 square kilometers, an area larger than Luxembourg. The company has conducted mining operations in roughly one quarter of that area, to devastating results for local people and the landscape. CBG has expropriated farmland, polluted water sources and caused long-term damage to the livelihoods of people near mining sites, according to Human Rights Watch. It has done so without the consent of those in its path.

Approximately 10 percent of the land that CBG has mined has undergone some form of rehabilitation, far below industry best practice...This has left behind vast dead zones that are useless for agriculture or raising livestock, the primary economic activities in the area. Runoff from strip mining pollutes rivers and springs, which people, crops and livestock rely on for water...Affected people have received little tangible benefit from CBG’s multibillion-dollar operations, leading to widespread disaffection and demonstrations that have occasionally turned violent...

And now, driven by the global demand for aluminum to feed the renewable energy transition, CBG has turned its attention to the pristine landscape north of the Cogon River. In recent months, a flurry of activity—convoys of CBG-badged trucks fanning out on dirt roads, village visits by company representatives, talk of exploration drilling—suggests that CBG is preparing to expand. The company estimates that it will need to increase its annual bauxite production by a third over current levels to meet the demands of the renewable energy transition...

In Guinea, people north of the Cogon River understand that the arrival of mining will affect their lives dramatically. But pinpointing precisely how—what CBG’s arrival might mean for their villages, their families and their way of life—has proven difficult...

Some people in the area have come to expect the worst, based on what they have seen and heard from relatives and friends whose lives have been upended by mining in areas south of the river...

CBG representatives have visited his village and inventoried his property in preparation for bauxite exploration. Recently, they gave him a laminated card itemizing several of his cashew trees that are in the exploration zone. He has been told that he’ll receive compensation for these trees, which are likely to be destroyed...

Inclusive Development International emailed questions and offered an opportunity to comment on the findings of this report to CBG, its shareholders and financiers, and the companies in its supply chain referenced above. Company responses can be viewed in full here...

[Refers to Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Natixis, ING Bank, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, GM, Ford, Toyota, Porsche, Hellenic Cables, Bayards Alumnium Solutions, and METLEN].