Uganda has inaugurated its first large-scale gold mine, a $250 million Chinese-owned project in the country’s east that will also refine the bullion to 99.9% purity, according to a statement from the president’s office.<\/p>\n
The landlocked east African country, which has a variety of minerals including copper, cobalt and iron ore, wants to expand its mining industry and position itself as a major gold producer and exporter.<\/p>\n
Last year Uganda raised $3.4 billion from gold exports, according to central bank data, about 37% of the country’s total export revenue. The figure includes the re-export of gold brought into the country, with nearly all its domestic production from small-scale artisanal miners.<\/p>\n
While its gold export earnings have increased in recent years, it is still far behind Africa’s largest bullion producer Ghana, which raised $11.6 billion from shipments of the metal last year.<\/p>\n
“In order to wake up in the minerals sector, we must have full value addition for all minerals like gold, lithium, tin among others,” President Yoweri Museveni said in a statement issued late on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Wagagai Gold Mining Project, owned by Wagagai Mining (U) Limited and covering just over nine square kilometres in Busia district, was inaugurated by Museveni on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The plant, which has started operations, is expected to process 5,000 tons of gold ore per day and produce about 1.2 metric tons of refined gold a year, according to the statement. That compares to Uganda’s total domestic production of just 0.0042 tons in 2023.<\/p>\n
Uganda will use the revenue generated by exporting gold to develop assets such as power stations and the country’s railway, Museveni said.<\/p>\n
Landlocked Uganda is currently constructing a 2.7 billion euro ($3.16 billion)\u00a0standard gauge railway\u00a0to reduce the cost of transporting its exports and imports via neighbouring Kenya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Uganda has inaugurated its first large-scale gold mine, a $250 million Chinese-owned project in the country’s east that will also refine the bullion to 99.9% purity, according to a statement from the president’s office. The landlocked east African country, which has a variety of minerals including copper, cobalt and iron ore, wants to expand its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32,2362],"tags":[396,132],"class_list":["post-17346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-economy","category-featured","tag-china","tag-uganda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}