At the foot of the Simandou mountains in southeast Guinea's lush tropical forest, thousands of workers, trucks and excavators are digging up the hills.

The verdant paradise is home to a gigantic mining project that promises to propel the poor west African country into the ranks of the world's largest iron exporters -- raising economic hopes but also concern for local populations.

In just a few weeks, Guinea will export its first shipments of iron ore from Simandou, officially launching production decades after the discovery of high-grade iron deposits.

"It wasn't too long ago where this was virgin forest," Chris Aitchison, managing director of SimFer, one of the operators of the site, told AFP, praising what he said had been a "monumental task" at multiple levels.

The project will ideally provide a stream of much-needed revenue for the country and has already resulted in construction of infrastructure that could diversify the economy: industrial partners have spent approximately $20 billion building more than 650 kilometres (400 miles) of railway and a massive port.

The logistical challenges building the mines were immense but so is the potential windfall from the site, which contains several billion tonnes of high-quality ore.

The price of iron ore, which is used for making steel, has skyrocketed since the early 2000s, fuelled by a boom in Chinese construction.

Ever since Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto confirmed the Simandou deposits in the mid-1990s, the site has been at the centre of a swirl of legal battles, political turmoil and corruption scandals.

Guinea's junta government, run by strongman Mamady Doumbouya who came to power in a 2021 coup, boasts of having finally pushed the project over the finish line.

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© International Business Times