Guinea outlawed exports of unprocessed gold on Saturday, requiring all producers to refine the metal into ingots at a new facility in Conakry before it can leave the country.
President Mamady Doumbouya announced the ban at a meeting with industrial and artisanal gold producers, broadcast on state television, warning that any operator shipping raw gold after the order will lose its mining licence and have its contracts voided.
“Raw gold will no longer leave Guinea,” Doumbouya said.
The decree puts immediate pressure on Société Aurifère de Guinée, the AngloGold Ashanti subsidiary that is among the country’s largest industrial gold producers. Guinea recorded gold exports of 22,142 kilograms across all operators in the first three months of this year, according to the Ministry of Mines and Geology.
Although Guinea holds the second largest gold reserves in West Africa, it ranks sixth among African nations in gold output, according to the World Gold Council. Officials say that gap reflects value flowing out of the country in raw form rather than as a certified, processed product.
Unlike many African beneficiation pledges tied to factories not yet constructed, the Conakry refinery is already operational, giving the ban enforcement teeth from day one.
Doumbouya has built a record of mineral sector intervention since taking power in a 2021 coup and winning a presidential election in December. Last year his government seized 51 mining concessions covering bauxite, gold, diamonds, graphite, and iron ore, citing inactivity and non-compliance with Guinea’s mining code. Several affected companies subsequently filed international arbitration claims.
Guinea is the world’s largest bauxite producer but earns a fraction of aluminium’s final value by exporting the ore unprocessed, a pattern the gold ban now targets in a second commodity.
Zimbabwe moved along similar lines earlier this year, suspending exports of lithium concentrates to press for greater domestic processing and tighter control over mineral revenues.
The Conakry facility addresses one constraint. Power supply remains another. Legal analysts at the international firm Gowling WLG noted in a January assessment that reliable baseload electricity has been a persistent barrier to Guinea’s downstream processing ambitions, though proposals for natural gas power generation could alter the operating environment over time.
No response from AngloGold Ashanti was immediately available.
