Doumbouya returns to Guinea after prolonged absence

President Mamady Doumbouya returned to Guinea Friday where he received a grand welcome at Conakry airport following a three-week absence that had raised questions about his health.

Doumbouya, 41, who has ruled the west African country with an iron fist since 2021 as junta leader then president, left Guinea on February 13 to attend an African Union summit in Addis Ababa. He had not been seen since.

Authorities said Monday that Doumbouya was in “good health”, having taken “a few days of rest” on the sidelines of the summit and undergone a routine medical check-up. It did not specify his whereabouts.

Doumbouya arrived at Conakry’s Ahmed Sekou Toure International Airport on Friday wearing a brown tunic and was greeted with fanfare by officials and a brass band.

Officials did not specify where he had flown from.

He waved from an armoured vehicle to several hundred people who were at the airport, many wearing caps and t-shirts with his image, an AFP journalist observed.

For months Doumbouya’s public appearances, in which he appeared visibly thinner, have been rare, fuelling speculation about his health.

After coming to power in a 2021 coup, Doumbouya was elected president for a seven-year term in December in a vote in which all major opposition leaders were barred.

For months, he has remained mostly out of the public eye, appearing only once on the campaign trail at a closing rally where he did not speak, and again to cast his ballot.

In January, he was sworn in before tens of thousands of supporters at a stadium and was seen again in February when he spoke at the AU summit.

Doumbouya toppled Guinea’s first freely elected president Alpha Conde in 2021 and has since cracked down on civil liberties and banned protests. Political opponents have been arrested, put on trial or driven into exile.

Since its 1958 independence, Guinea has had a complex history of military and authoritarian rule.