Ex-Guinean PM, opposition leader Sidya Toure dies at 81

Sidya Toure, former prime minister and a leading opposition figure in Guinea where dissenting voices and political parties have been stifled, has died at age 81, sources close to his family told AFP.

Toure had been leading one of the country’s major opposition parties, the Union of Republican Forces (UFR), from exile in Ivory Coast.

UFR was among 40 political parties dissolved in March in a major crackdown on civil liberties under the country’s longtime strongman Mamady Doumbouya.

Toure died Friday in Paris after several decades at the forefront of Guinean public life.

He had been hospitalised at the American Hospital of Paris for some two weeks after falling ill in Abidjan, sources close to his family, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for their safety, told AFP.

Toure had lived in Abidjan since leaving Guinea following the September 2021 military coup that brought Doumbouya to power.

Doumbouya was subsequently elected president of the west African nation last December in a vote that did not include the UFR or the country’s two other main opposition parties, the UFDG and RPG.

Guinean president Lansana Conte, in power between 1984 and 2008, had appointed Toure as prime minister in July 1996, a role he served in until March 1999.

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His tenure as prime minister was marked by administrative and economic reforms, as well as efforts to strengthen Guinea’s relations with international financial institutions.

After leaving the government, Toure became head of the UFR in 2000. He gradually became a leading figure opposing Conte and subsequent governments.

Toure ran for president as the UFR candidate in 2010 and 2015, losing both times.

Born in 1945 in Ivory Coast, he also spent part of his career in that country, particularly in its economic and financial administration.

Current Guinean Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah remembered Toure in a post on X as “a prominent figure in Guinea’s political life for three decades”.

“He distinguished himself above all as a pragmatic reformer. We bow before his memory,” Bah said.