Lansana Kouyaté (born 15 July 1950)[1] is a Guinean politician and diplomat who served as Prime Minister of Guinea from 2007 to 2008.

[1] In 1982, Kouyaté worked on a rice development project, then moved to the diplomatic service, joining Guinea's delegation in Côte d'Ivoire.

[3] In June 1994, he became the Assistant Secretary-General in the UN Department of Political Affairs, [4] one of his first missions being a tour around ECOWAS member states to discuss the situation in Liberia.

[5] He left this job in September 1997 to become the Executive Secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a post he held until February 2002.

[9][10][11] This was considered surprising; it had been generally believed that Kouyaté would not be dismissed prior to the planned December 2008 parliamentary election.

[13] Kouyaté was widely considered a disappointment in his role as Prime Minister, and his unpopularity meant that his dismissal was not greeted with major unrest of the kind that led to his appointment a year earlier; in particular, his time in office was associated with rising food prices, deepening the country's economic problems.

[15] Many soldiers, dissatisfied over their failure to receive wage arrears, were unhappy with Kouyaté's dismissal, feeling that it left them with no one to whom they could address their grievances.