Africa is, by volume, the world's leading gold-producing region — yet remarkably little of the wealth that gold generates stays on the continent. The reasons, Al Jazeera reported, lie in a supply chain built almost entirely abroad, and in a vast informal trade that moves gold out of Africa off the books.
A producer that captures little
Africa mined roughly 1,010 tonnes of gold in 2023 — around 27% of global supply, by Visual Capitalist's tally — led by Ghana, Mali, South Africa and Sudan, and the continent holds an estimated 40% of the world's reserves. But Africa has little refining capacity of its own. Most gold leaves unprocessed, and the high-margin stages — refining, pricing and trading — are concentrated in London, Zurich and Dubai. "Limited refining capacity, capital bottlenecks and historical trade patterns" keep African producers at the low end of their own commodity, analyst Kate Collett told Al Jazeera.
The smuggling machinery
The biggest leak is outright smuggling, concentrated in artisanal and small-scale mining. A widely cited 2024 report by the Swiss group Swissaid — which compared what African countries report exporting with what destination countries report importing — found that between 321 and 474 tonnes of artisanal gold are produced in Africa each year with no official declaration, the bulk of small-scale output. In 2022 alone, it estimated, at least 435 tonnes were smuggled out, worth around $30.7 billion — more than a tonne a day. Smuggling, the group found, more than doubled between 2012 and 2022.
Mali illustrates the gap: official artisanal output has been reported at about six tonnes a year, while Swissaid estimates the real figure at 30 to 57 tonnes, according to coverage by Ecofin Agency.
Where the gold becomes "legal"
The United Arab Emirates — Dubai in particular — sits at the center of the trade. Swissaid estimated the UAE imported some 2,569 tonnes of undeclared African gold between 2012 and 2022, worth roughly $115 billion; in 2022, two-thirds of the African gold it received had no matching export record. Lightly scrutinized hand-carried imports allow informally exported metal to acquire legal standing once it clears Emirati customs. From there, much of it flows to Switzerland — home to four of the world's nine biggest refineries — and to India, where, historically, neither buyer was required to prove the gold had been legally exported at source.
Who actually profits
The value is split across the chain. At the bottom, artisanal miners working in often hazardous, informal conditions receive a fraction of the spot price, paid in cash. Intermediaries and cross-border traders route the metal through transit hubs to avoid the duties and royalties owed to African governments. Dealers abroad convert informal gold into documented inventory, and refiners sell it into the formal market at full price. Large industrial miners are a separate case: they pay taxes and royalties, but their profits accrue mainly to foreign shareholders, and the ore's value is realized only after it leaves the continent.
The human cost — and the response
The opacity has darker dimensions. Armed groups in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sahel and Sudan have been documented taxing or controlling artisanal mines, using gold — compact, anonymous and liquid — to finance themselves; once refined, such metal is indistinguishable from legitimate supply. The informal sector is also linked to child and forced labor, deadly mine collapses and mercury pollution.
African governments are pushing back, unevenly. Tanzania now requires that a fifth of gold output be sold to its central bank to build reserves and keep value onshore; Ghana has expanded central-bank buying; Mali is developing a state refinery; and several countries are setting up licensed buying centers to draw artisanal miners into formal, documented channels. Campaigners are also pressing importing countries — Switzerland and the UAE among them — to require proof of legal export before gold can enter their markets. Until that friction exists, the economics of smuggling will keep favoring every link in the chain except the African states left with an empty till.
