page_title: Ahmed Sékou Touré
section_title: President of Guinea
hierarchical_section_title: Ahmed Sékou Touré / President of Guinea
caption_attribution_description: Slovenščina: Ahmed Sékou Touré na obisku v Ljubljani.
context_page_description: Ahmed Sékou Touré was a Guinean political leader and African statesman who became the first President of Guinea, serving from 1958 until his death in 1984. Touré was among the primary Guinean nationalists involved in gaining independence of the country from France.
  A devout Muslim from the Mandinka ethnic group, Sékou Touré was the great grandson of the powerful Mandinka Muslim cleric Samori Toure who established an independent Islamic rule in part of West Africa. In 1960, he declared his Democratic Party of Guinea the only legal party in the state, and ruled from then on as a virtual dictator. He was re-elected unopposed to four seven-year terms in the absence of any legal opposition. Under his rule many people were killed including at the notorious Camp Boiro.
context_section_description: In 1960, Touré declared the PDG to be the only legal party, though the country had effectively been a one-party state since independence. For the next 24 years, Touré effectively held all governing power in the nation. He was elected to a seven-year term as president in 1961; as leader of the PDG he was the only candidate. He was reelected unopposed in 1968, 1974 and 1982. Every five years, a single list of PDG candidates was returned to the National Assembly.
  During his presidency, Touré's policies were strongly based on Marxism, with the nationalization of foreign companies and centralized economic plans. He won the Lenin Peace Prize as a result in 1961. His early actions to reject the French and then to appropriate wealth and farmland from traditional landlords angered many powerful forces, but the increasing failure of his government to provide either economic opportunities or democratic rights angered more. Famously, he stated that "Guinea prefers poverty in freedom to riches in slavery."
  Guineans who had fled reported that Touré's regime "practices tyranny and tourture on a daily basis".  His approach towards his opponents caused charges to be brought from Amnesty International (as well as other human rights organizations), accusing his rule to be too oppressive. From 1965 to 1975 Toure ended all his government's relations with France, the former colonial power.
  Touré argued that Africa had lost much during colonization, and that Africa ought to retaliate by cutting off ties to former colonial nations. However, in 1978 Guinea's ties with the Soviet Union soured, and, as a sign of reconciliation, President of France Valéry Giscard d'Estaing visited Guinea, the first state visit by a French president.
  Throughout Toure's dispute with France, he maintained good relations with several socialist countries. However, Touré's attitude toward France was not generally well received by his own people and some other African countries ended diplomatic relations with Guinea over his actions. He also often voiced his distrust of other African nations.  Meanwhile, some 1.5 million Guineans were fleeing Guinea to neighboring countries, such as Sierra Leone. Despite this, Touré's position won the support of many anti-colonialist and Pan-African groups and leaders.
  Touré's primary allies in the region were presidents Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Modibo Keita of Mali. After Nkrumah was overthrown in a 1966 coup, Touré offered him asylum in Guinea and gave him the honorary title of co-president. As a leader of the Pan-Africanist movement, Toure consistently spoke out against colonial powers, and befriended African American civil rights activists such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, to whom he offered asylum. The latter took the two leaders' names, as Kwame Ture.
  With Nkrumah, Toure helped in the formation of the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party, and aided the PAIGC guerrillas in their fight against Portuguese colonialism in neighboring Portuguese Guinea. The Portuguese launched an attack upon Conakry in 1970 in order to rescue Portuguese prisoners of war, overthrow Touré's regime, and destroy PAIGC bases. They succeeded in the rescue but failed to dislodge Touré's regime.
  His relations with Washington soured, however, after Kennedy's death. When a Guinean delegation was imprisoned in Ghana, after the overthrow of Nkrumah, Touré blamed Washington. He feared that the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as the Soviet Union, were plotting against his own regime even though he was taking economic aid from both parties.
  During its first three decades of independence, Guinea developed into a militantly socialist state, which merged the functions and membership of the PDG with the various institutions of government, including the public state bureaucracy. This unified party-state had nearly complete control over the country's economic and political life. Guinea expelled the US Peace Corps in 1966 because of their alleged involvement in a plot to overthrow President Touré. Similar charges were directed against France; diplomatic relat
caption: Sékou Touré visiting Yugoslavia in 1961
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