On 19 August 2026 a decree fixing the application of article 1003 of the Code civil was read on national television. If it says what press accounts say it says, it is the most consequential thing to happen to electronic signature in Guinea since the Code civil itself.
It also has no published reference number, no official text in circulation, and no entry in the government’s decree registry. Both of those sentences are true at the same time, and a post that gives you only one of them is not worth reading.
What was waiting for it
Article 1003 grants a presumption of reliability to an electronic signature — but only “dans des conditions fixées par décret”, under conditions fixed by decree. Until a decree fixed them, the presumption had nothing to attach to. The previous post walks through what that presumption does and, just as importantly, what it does not do.
This decree is the text that clause has been pointing at since 2019.
What press accounts say it contains
Everything in this section is as reported. We have not seen the official text, and neither, as far as we can tell, has anyone writing about it. Read each line as “press accounts describe”, not as “the decree provides”.
Five validity criteria. Reports describe a set of five conditions an electronic signature must satisfy to carry legal value. We are deliberately not listing them. Without the official wording, a list would be a paraphrase of a paraphrase, and the exact words are the entire substance of a criterion.
ANDE as certifier. Article 7, as reported, makes the Agence Nationale de la Digitalisation de l’État the sole authority competent to certify providers of electronic-signature certification services. ANDE is not new: it was created by Décret D/2022/196/PRG/CNRD/SGG of 12 April 2022, as a public establishment under the ministry responsible for posts, telecommunications and the digital economy.
A ten-year retention floor. Article 8, as reported, requires any natural or legal person to archive electronically signed documents for a minimum of ten years.
Technical standards deferred again. Article 6, as reported, sends the technical standards themselves to a joint order of the ministries responsible for telecommunications and the digital economy and for justice. So a further text is expected below this one.
Sanctions by cross-reference. Article 9, as reported, routes penalties through the existing cybercrime and personal-data-protection law rather than creating its own scale.
Reports also say the decree took effect on signature and repeals contrary earlier provisions.
Why we are not citing it
Four things are missing, and each one matters on its own.
No reference number. Guinean decrees carry a number of the form D/2026/xxxx/PRG/SGG. This one has none in public circulation. A text you cannot cite by number is a text you cannot put in a contract, a policy, or a submission.
No official text. Every account of the content traces back to television coverage and its written reproductions. Nobody appears to be working from the decree itself.
Not in the registry. The Secretariat General’s decree index does not list it. As of 29 August 2026 the index runs up to numbers 0258 and 0259, dated 20 August, and neither concerns electronic signature.
Not published by the agency it names. ANDE’s own site does not carry it either.
None of that means the decree does not exist. Decrees are routinely signed and announced before the official text is circulated. It means the responsible position today is that a decree was announced, its reported content is credible, and nothing in it is yet an obligation you can read for yourself.
That is also the honest way to talk to a customer about it. A provider telling you today that it meets the decree’s criteria is telling you it meets criteria whose text nobody has published.
The part nobody has reconciled
Set the decree aside for a moment, because there is a structural question underneath it.
Guinea now has three bodies holding adjacent certification-shaped powers over this area. ANSSI, created in 2016, runs an accreditation track for signature certification service providers. ARPT is the sector regulator under the 2016 electronic-transactions law, reinforced by the May 2026 audit decrees. And ANDE, as reported, becomes the sole certifier of electronic-signature certification providers.
Separately, the reliability presumption in article 34 of Loi L/2016/035/AN — the 2016 electronic-transactions law’s own version of the same idea — still waits on its own presidential decree, which we have found no evidence was ever issued. The August 2026 decree implements the Code civil’s article 1003. It does not, on any account we have read, resolve article 34.
Which body a signing provider must actually satisfy, and how the two presumptions sit together, is a question for Guinean counsel. It is not one to infer from a press summary, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What changes the day it is published
Publication would turn most of this post into settled fact. Specifically, it would give you a number to cite, the exact wording of the five criteria, a procedure and a timetable for ANDE certification, and a clear start date for the ten-year retention floor — including whether it reaches documents already signed.
Until then, three practical positions.
Do not rebuild a process on a press report. Nothing in the reported text asks you to change how you sign a document tomorrow.
Do take the retention direction seriously. A ten-year floor is long enough that it is worth knowing now whether your signed documents would survive ten years in the form you keep them, and whether they live somewhere you would still have access to.
Keep watching the registry, not the coverage. The number appearing in the official index is the event worth reacting to.
What did not change
Articles 1002 and 1003 of the Code civil said what they say before 19 August 2026. Electronic writing and signature are evidence where the signer can be identified and the document’s integrity is guaranteed, and a signing record that can demonstrate both is what carries a document either way.
A decree can make that easier to prove. It was never the thing that made it true.
General information, not legal advice, and everything above attributed to press accounts is exactly that. Contact reaches a person if you want to talk through what this would mean for your documents.