Saïfoulaye Diallo

El Hadj Saïfoulaye Diallo (* 1923 in Diary near Labé ; † September 25, 1981 in Conakry ) was a Guinean politician .

After attending the Koran school, pupil of the high school "Camille Guy" in Conakry and finally graduate of the college for administration "William Ponty" in Sébikhotane near Dakar Diallo began to work in 1942 as an accountant. Transferred from 1943 to 1947 to the financial administration of Niger , he made the acquaintance of Djibo Bakary there and in 1947 joined a communist study group. In the same year he was ordered back to Guinea to replace his father as village chief in his home village. In Guinea he made first contacts with the PDG . Between 1949 and 1955 he was transferred several times after a two-year leave of absence from government service from 1947 to 1949 and served in various colonial offices in what is now Burkina-Faso. Sick of a serious lung disease there, he recovered for eight months in Fouta Djallon in 1955 and analyzed the political situation there within the French colonies. In the same year he took up an activity in the financial administration in Mamou , without neglecting his political activities and was in the elections for the French National Assembly in 1956 together with Sekou Touré a member of Guinea's parliament. Elected Mayor Mamous in March 1957, he became President of the Territorial Assembly of semi-autonomous Guinea and a member of the High Council of French West Africa that same year.

After Guinea gained independence, he served as Secretary General of the PDG and President of the National Assembly. It was not until 1963 that he entered the Guinean government and became Minister of State for Justice and administrative and financial control. In 1964 Diallo became finance and planning minister and at the same time first and permanent representative of the head of state Sekou Touré during his numerous absences abroad. Minister of Finance in 1968 and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1969, he became Minister without Portfolio in the Presidential Office of Guinea in 1972 and thus de facto Vice-President of the country. In 1973 he represented the seriously ill Mafory Bangoura in the Ministry of Social Affairs , before he became chairman of the ineffective "State Committee for Relations with the Countries of the Arab League" due to internal quarrels in the collective leadership body of the Guinean state party PDG and due to his own bad health. Again a member of the inner leadership circle of the PDG in 1978, he was appointed Minister of Health in 1979. Shortly before his death, he was assigned the post of deputy minister at the National Assembly.

Although Saïfoulaye Diallo repeatedly had to seek lengthy medical treatment because of his lung disease, he shaped the basic principles of Guinean politics and, in a certain way, formed a counterpoint to Sekou Touré's sometimes erratic politics, especially externally.

literature

• Sidiki Kobélé Keita: Un homme de conviction et de foi: Saifoulaye Diallo (1923-1981). SKK, Conakry, 2003.
• Excerpt from the biographical data of the French National Assembly