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.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list“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 worl …
