18 the spectator | 29 february 2020 | http://www.spectator.co.ukwho set up an office in Conakry, Guinea’s
ramshackle seaside capital. They helped
him tighten laws against corruption in the
mineral sector and Mr Condé signed off a
£3 billion aluminium deal with an invest-
ment fund to which Mr Blair was a paid
adviser. Mr Blair stated at the time that he
had not profited personally from the deal or
been involved in brokering it.
AGI advised on building a new hydro-
electric dam — doubling Guinea’s power
output — and co-ordinated the response
to the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Soon Condé
was doing the global conference circuit as a
Blair-endorsed model leader, holding forth
on transparency and accountability.
In 2013 there was a little bump in the road
to perfect governance. Condé’s security forc-
es shot dead nine people in anti-governmentprotests. A leaked AGI document showed a
discussion about the need for a new ‘narra-
tive’ to affirm Condé as a man of ‘democratic
process and dialogue’. But Condé began to
make other powerful friends. In the past two
years he has twice visited Vladimir Putin,
whose predecessors ran Guinea as a Sovi-
et client state in the 1960s. Russia is keen
to regain its influence there. After Condé
announced his plans to amend the consti-
tution, the Russian ambassador to Guinea,
Alexandre Bregadze, abandoned diplomatic
neutrality and came out in favour.
In a televised speech that only a Putin
apparatchik could think was normal, Mr
Bregadze told Guineans: ‘Do you know
many presidents in Africa who do better? It’sconstitutions that adapt to reality, not reali-
ty that adapts to constitutions.’ Mr Bregadze
wasn’t just being rhetorical. Since his speech,
he has moved to a new job as head of the
Guinea branch of the Russian aluminium
giant Rusal, a sign that Moscow is digging
in to protect its big mineral stake in Guinea.
There are rumours that Wagner Group, the
Kremlin-backed mercenary outfit, has sent
‘advisers’ into Guinea to help Mr Condé
win this year’s election. Their way of helping
out may be rather different from the AGI’s.
It isn’t just in Guinea that the AGI has
had only partial success. In post-genocide
Rwanda, it has worked with President Paul
Kagame, another Blair protégé. The AGI’s
website points out — rightly — that Rwanda
now has one of the most advanced econo-
mies in Africa, but makes no mention of the
widespread claims that Kagame has silenced
opponents at home and sent hit squads to
kill dissidents abroad. Meanwhile, in the
newly minted republic of South Sudan — the
one championed by George Clooney et al
— the AGI’s work with President Salva Kiir
ended abruptly when the country lurched
into a civil war that has since claimed nearly
400,000 lives.
Perhaps, in Guinea’s case, it’s time for
Blair to intervene again. You can imagine
the phone call. ‘Hi, it’s Tony here. Remem-
ber me? About this plan to stay on. It’s not
exactly the way we do things in the West...’
When I asked the AGI recently if Tony Blair
had been in touch with his old protégé they
declined to say, although they confirmed
that they still had staff working in Guinea
to support infrastructure projects. But this is
the trouble with helping such rulers when in
power — they may begin to think they did
it all on their own. Some in Guinea say that
Condé began to feel Blair was surplus to his
requirements after the premier won his sec-
ond election in 2015.
The AGI, meanwhile, has now also been
incorporated into the new Tony Blair Insti-
tute for Global Change, a thinktank that
aims to fight ‘authoritarian populism’. Given
Le Professeur’s new friendship with Mr
Putin, it could well be that he has a very dif-
ferent set of dealings with Mr Blair in future.SPECTATOR.CO.UK/PODCAST
Colin Freeman and Chatham House’s Alex
Vines on where it all went wrong for Guinea.W
hen Alpha Condé ‘Le Professeur’
became president of Guinea in
2010, he was hailed by Tony Blair
as an ideal leader — the very model of what
an African premier should be. Unlike pre-
vious rulers, Condé didn’t shoot his way to
the top, but arrived armed with a law degree
from the Sorbonne and Guinea’s first ever
democratic mandate. Blair chose Le Profes-
seur as a client for his Africa Governance
Initiative (AGI), set up to nurture a new
generation of ‘good guy’ African leaders,
and Condé was introduced to a network of
experts — not woolly DfID types, but sharp
tacks with Downing Street experience. The
idea was to replicate Mr Blair’s successful
policy ‘delivery unit’ across Africa.
Unfortunately, Condé has begun to suc-
cumb to African Strongman Syndrome.
Though he’s now 81, he has announced
plans to scrap the constitutional rules that
forbid him a third term in office. There have
been protests, and at least 30 people killed.
Opposition activists have been charged with
insurrection. Condé’s reputation as a model
leader looks shaky — as does the reputation
of the AGI. So how and why did the Alpha
Condé experiment go wrong?
When I first went to Guinea in 2009, the
previous president, Lansana Conté, had just
died after 25 years in office. Another mili-
tary hardman, Moussa ‘Dadis’ Camara, had
seized power. Camara’s first act was to lift
the lid on how the Conté family had got
into bed with Latino cocaine cartels, turn-
ing Guinea into west Africa’s first fully
functioning narco-state. Drug barons were
hosted at a villa once owned by the first lady,
and had a private airstrip to land their prod-
uct. Camara organised live televised interro-
gation shows, where Conté’s son and others
confessed to using the presidential guard to
protect the goods and diplomatic bags to
courier them to Europe.
The ‘Dadis Show’, as it became known,
was so popular that DVDs of it were even
sold in the local markets. It also doubled as
filmed proof that Camara, a braggart and
narcissist, was not going to be much of an
upgrade on Conté, so nobody was too sad
when he was shot by his own bodyguard.
In the wake of such lousy competition,
all Condé had to do was not actively mess
things up. And to start with he succeeded.
He paid close attention to his AGI advisers,Condé nasty
How Blair’s protégé became another African strongman
COLIN FREEMAN‘We’re here about the superforecaster job.’At 81, Condé has announced plans
to scrap constitutional rules that
forbid him a third term in offi ceWhere did it all go wrong for Tony Blair’s protege in Guinea?
Colin Freeman_29 Feb 2020_The Spectator 18 26/02/2020 10: