Mountaga Sylla is IFES's Country Director for Guinea.
Mountaga first joined IFES as an intern in the Conakry, Guinea Office in 2002. Over the following two decades, he grew into a senior international development and governance program leader with experience across Francophone Africa, specializing in electoral operations, technical assistance to electoral management bodies (EMBs), civil society strengthening, civic and voter education, electoral reforms, electoral dispute resolution, and program and financial management. He has held senior country program leadership positions with IFES in Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Niger, and Burkina Faso. An African Union-certified and BRIDGE-accredited trainer, Mountaga has facilitated BRIDGE, strategic planning, and logistics training workshops; developed training manuals; designed civic and over education campaigns; trained EMB trainers; assisted administrative and financial departments to develop electoral budgets; supported the production and deployment of electoral materials; and led the development of communications plans for EMBs in Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, the DRC, the Central African Republic, Niger, and Burkina Faso. A dynamic leader, Mountaga has strong collaboration skills and a successful record supporting civil society to create sustainable, nonpartisan networks for advocacy, electoral reform, and dispute resolution.
A respected voice and well-connected expert in his native Guinea, Mountaga designed and is currently implementing conflict resolution and consensus-building interventions that are showing success in reducing political tensions (such as through securing the release of detained high-profile political and civic leaders) and bringing conflicting stakeholders together to design Guinea’s path out of the current military-led transition into a stronger democratic dispensation.