Two questions arrive together and get tangled, so it is worth separating them before answering either.
The first is about the future: can I be required to sign electronically when I would rather use paper? The second is about the past: someone sent me a document they signed electronically, can I refuse to accept it?
These have different answers, and confusing them is how negotiations stall over nothing.
Can you be made to sign electronically?
Practically, no. Nobody can force a signature out of you in any medium. If you decline to sign a contract electronically, you have declined to sign that contract in that form, and the other party’s options are to offer paper, renegotiate, or walk away.
Where it gets less comfortable is when the requirement is structural rather than personal. A supplier portal that only accepts electronic submissions, an employer whose whole document process moved online, a bank that will not take paper for a particular product. Nobody is forcing your hand, but the alternative to signing electronically may be not doing business with that party at all. That is a commercial pressure, not a legal compulsion, and it is worth being honest about the difference.
The other thing worth saying: most people who refuse are not objecting on principle. They are objecting because they do not understand what will happen when they click, and nobody explained it. That is usually fixable in one conversation, and it is a far better use of your energy than an argument about rights.
Can you refuse a document someone else signed electronically?
This is the more interesting question, and the answer is: you can refuse to accept anything, but refusing does not make it disappear.
Refusing to countersign is entirely your right. If a supplier sends you an electronically signed contract and you do not want to be in that contract, do not sign it. Nothing about the medium changes that.
Refusing to acknowledge a document you already agreed to is a different matter. If you signed, and the record shows you signed — your identity established, a code typed back from your own phone, a timestamp, a sealed file that has not changed since — then saying “I do not accept electronic signatures” afterwards is not a defence. It is a statement of preference about something that has already happened.
This is exactly what the evidence is for. The certificate page attached to the sealed document exists so that the question is answerable from the file rather than from two people’s recollections.
The narrow case where refusal has teeth
There is one situation where an objection is substantive rather than stylistic: when the signature genuinely does not establish what it claims.
If the only evidence is that a link was opened from an address that several people share, and there is no further identity check, then “that was not me” is a real argument, and a weak signature invites it. Likewise if the document was altered after signing — although with a properly sealed file, that shows.
The lesson is not that electronic signatures are fragile. It is that the objection you actually have to defend against is about identity, which is the thing you choose the strength of when you set the document up.
What to do when someone refuses
Ask what they are worried about. Nine times in ten it is one specific thing: they think they need an account, or they think their phone cannot do it, or they have heard it is not valid here. Each of those has a one-sentence answer.
Offer the record. Send them the certificate page from a previous document. Seeing that the file contains named signers, timestamps and a document fingerprint changes the conversation from an abstraction into something concrete.
Do not make it a fight. Print it. Genuinely. One paper contract costs you an afternoon; a counterparty who feels bullied costs you the relationship. Move the rest of your documents electronically and come back to this one later.
Where the law sits
Guinean law recognises electronic writing and signature as evidence where the signer can be identified and the document’s integrity is guaranteed. The recognition attaches to the conditions, not to whether a party likes the format. A document that meets them is evidence; a party’s later preference for paper does not unmake it.
Separately, some acts do carry specific formal requirements, and for those the medium is not a free choice. That is a document-by-document question for your lawyer, not something to settle from a blog post.
General information, not legal advice.
The e-signature product page shows what the certificate page contains, which is usually the fastest way to answer an objection.