From Democracy to Dictatorship: The Economic Impact of Guinea's 2021 Coup

The central thesis of this paper is the examination of economic management within the period of Alpha Conde and Colonel Mamady Doumbouya in Guinea. To achieve this objective, the scope of this paper was limited to the Guinea coup of 2021 which was incidental to the promulgation permitting Alpha Conde to seek two more terms in office even though he just won his third reelection bid. The paper adopted the content analysis of secondary materials such as journal articles, magazines, the internet, etcetera using the desk research methodology. The purposive technique was adopted for sample (document) selection. The presentation and discussion of data were done in prose. As demonstrated, there is indeed a relationship between political institutions and economic performance. While Guinea’s coup d’état provided the Guinean people with hope that their political and economic conditions may improve, the military’s assumption of power potentially made things worse for the Guinean people as can be seen with the GDP rate for 2020 and 2021. Aside from international disapproval of an unconstitutional takeover, Guinea’s economy suffered as a result of crippling sanctions. Regardless of regime type, there should be limited state intervention in the economy, leaders should eschew clientelist tendencies, and the promotion of bureaucratic capacities as measures to ensure effective economic management.