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During the meeting, Vladimir Putin awarded Alpha Conde a state decoration of the Russian Federation, the Order of Friendship, for his significant personal contribution to the development of the Russia-Guinea relations.

Following the talks, the two presidents attended the signing of cooperation documents. Those included an inter-governmental agreement on cooperation in healthcare, medical training and science; several inter-agency documents on cooperation in epidemiology and prevention of infectious diseases in the Republic of Guinea, cooperation in action against drug trafficking, psychotropic substances and their precursors, cooperation in higher education, science, research and development, and innovation. Additionally, memorandums of understanding on cooperation in agriculture were signed concerning the agreements on the extension of the Dian-Dian concession agreement of July 21, 2001 and the agreement on recovery, expansion and development of Kindia bauxite fields of November 3, 2000.

The presidents of Russia and Guinea made statements for the press.

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Beginning of talks with President of the Republic of Guinea Alpha Conde

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, friends.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Moscow.

We have met recently at an international event in China. Last year, you attended the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

It is gratifying that we have come a long way in the 60 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries, which we will mark in October of next year.

Our trade is modest so far, but it is growing and has doubled recently. Russian investors are interested in the Guinean economy. One of them, Rusal, has invested over $300 million in Guinea.

Mr President, we are pleased to welcome you as President of Guinea and also as Chairperson of the African Union.

Once again, welcome to Moscow.

President of the Republic of Guinea and Chairperson of the African Union Alpha Conde (retranslated): Thank you very much.

It is a great pleasure for me to visit Russia again.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you, Mr President, for the assistance provided in the fight against the Ebola pandemic. The Russian Federation was one of the first countries to get involved in the relief efforts during the crisis. Russia also opened a crisis centre to conduct research into treatment of the Ebola fever in our country.

In order to expand our bilateral cooperation, we opened a joint research centre for Kindia mineral deposits and I hope that the centre’s opportunities will only grow in the future.

I hope that our collaboration in healthcare will also expand. We rely on your assistance, as before, in developing and using the vaccine, and in training medical professionals in the use of these preparations in practice.

As we noted during our meeting in St Petersburg, many Russian businesses are genuinely interested in investing in the Guinean economy. I truly count on your support in both retaining the companies already operating in our market and bringing more investors to our territory.

Since gaining independence from the French Republic, we have been tirelessly building up our tourist potential and believe that the opportunities are not yet exhausted.

Our cooperation is expanding in a wide range of areas. This includes construction of plants and various infrastructure projects. I hope that we will be seeing additional opportunities in the future.

As you rightly noted, Mr President, we have yet much to achieve in our economic collaboration. I hope we will enter a new level and build up our cooperation to reach the heights available to us. Therefore, I suggest that we assign our partnership the status of strategic.

Guinea indeed has many assets and a wealth of diverse natural resources that can be explored. The cooperation potential is huge but we need to broaden and develop it. Unfortunately, there are not always sufficient financial means for these purposes.

So I hope that within the public-private partnership involving Russian investors, we can overcome this stumbling block and use our potential to the full.

We have already approved a development plan and a forward-looking development agenda until 2020. We are discussing opportunities for additional funding with the Paris Club. We hope Russia will participate in the talks of the consultative club on relations with the Paris Club. We also rely on the Russian Federation to participate in various concessions currently being developed in our country.

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