Mamady Doumbouya has led the country since a 2021 coup. Some fear he has no intention of relinquishing power

Across Guinea’s capital, Conakry, billboards and posters proclaim the people’s loyalty to the vision of Mamady Doumbouya, the general who has led the west African country since a coup in September 2021.

The iconography is omnipresent. Along the Fidel Castro highway, the posters hang on poles that rise out of piles of rubbish. Near the grand mosque, one poster is accompanied by the gnomic inscription “Your silence is precious, your eyes reassuring”. Another, bearing an image of him shaking Xi Jinping’s hand at a meeting in Beijing in September, has the caption: “Welcome back Mamady Doumbouya, our pride.”