N'Famara Keïta

Who is N'Famara Keïta?

N'Famara Keïta was a Guinean economist and politician. He served in the council of the Politburo of the First Republic of Guinea as Minister of Trade from 1963.

Keïta was born in 1924 in Molota in the Kindia Region, completed some secondary schooling in Dakar and in 1947 was appointed a court clerk in Macenta. He was selected by the future President Ahmed Sékou Touré as a trade union activist, and became a member of the Guinean Democratic Party. In 1956 he was elected mayor of Kindia. When Guinea gained independence from France, on 10 November 1958 he was appointed secretary of state in the Office of the Presidency.

In April 1960, as Minister of Cooperatives, he unveiled a plan for development of industry and agriculture that significantly increased collective ownership of the means of production, a measure greeted enthusiastically by party militants and unexpectedly endorsed by the president. In 1962 he visited Moscow, where he signed a trade agreement. On 1 January 1963 he was appointed Minister of Trade, on 1 February 1964 he was named Vice-President and on 8 November 1964 he became Minister for Macenta. In 19 January 1968 he was named a member of the politburo and Minister of Commerce, Transport, Posts and Telecommunications. In this role, in February 1969 he visited China in 1969 where he met Mao Zedong in Beijing. In the 1972 cabinet he became Minister of Social Affairs. In May 1972 he was among the members of the National Politburo who welcomed Fidel Castro of Cuba on his visit to Guinea. In a final cabinet reorganization on 1 June 1979 he was appointed Minister of Energy and for Konkouré.