Guinea’s Former Prime Minister and Veteran Opposition Leader Sidya Toure Dies in Paris at 81

Sidya Toure, a former prime minister of Guinea and a towering figure in the country’s opposition, has died in Paris at the age of 81. Sources close to his family announced that Toure passed away on Friday after being hospitalized for approximately two weeks at the American Hospital of Paris, following a sudden illness in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

Toure led the Union of Republican Forces (UFR), one of Guinea’s primary opposition parties, from exile in Ivory Coast. He fled Guinea after the September 2021 military coup that brought Colonel Mamady Doumbouya to power. Under Doumbouya’s subsequent administration, the UFR was among forty political parties dissolved in a major crackdown on civil liberties. Doumbouya was later elected president in a December vote that excluded the UFR and other key opposition parties.

Born in 1945 in Ivory Coast, Toure also worked in the country’s economic and financial administration. In Guinea, President Lansana Conte appointed him prime minister in July 1996, a position he held until March 1999. His tenure was characterized by administrative and economic reforms and efforts to strengthen Guinea’s relations with international financial institutions. After leaving the government, Toure became head of the UFR in 2000, positioning himself as a leading critic of the ruling establishment and running for the presidency in 2010 and 2015.

Current Guinean Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah remembered Toure in a post on X, calling him “a prominent figure in Guinea’s political life for three decades.” Bah added, “He distinguished himself above all as a pragmatic reformer. We bow before his memory.”

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