Guinea aims to become a regional gold \u200brefining hub, its mines minister said, joining a broader push by West \u200cAfrican producers to process bullion locally rather than exporting it to the Middle East and beyond.<\/p>\n
The move underscores efforts to retain more value at home as gold prices remain high.<\/p>\n
“If each (West African) country \u200bhas a refinery, there is no problem,” Mines Minister Bouna Sylla told Reuters \u200bover the weekend.<\/p>\n
“If your refinery is not competitive, it will fail \u2060or succeed because of economics, not politics.”<\/p>\n
President Mamady Doumbouya last week banned raw gold \u200bexports with immediate effect as the world’s\u00a0top bauxite producer\u00a0seeks to retain more value domestically.<\/p>\n
GUINEA \u200bREFINERY AMONG AFRICA’S LARGEST<\/strong><\/p>\n Guinea has built a new refinery capable of processing output from across the region, Sylla said, describing it as among the largest in Africa.<\/p>\n Bangaly Steve Toure, deputy head of Guinea’s \u200bMining Investment Fund, said separately the $30 million plant would initially process 530 metric tons (about \u200b17 million ounces) a year, rising to 733 tons at full capacity. Commercial operations are expected in \u200cJuly \u2060following final approvals.<\/p>\n Africa’s top gold\u00a0producer Ghana, along with\u00a0Mali\u00a0and Burkina Faso, is also racing to develop a domestic refining hub to capture more value from\u00a0bullion.<\/p>\n Guinea’s industrial gold output is dominated by AngloGold Ashanti\u00a0and Nordgold. West Africa produced about 11 million ounces in \u200b2025, based on industry \u200bestimates.<\/p>\n Sylla said Guinea \u2060produced roughly 2.32 million ounces last year, worth about $7 billion, but retains less than 1% of that value domestically.<\/p>\n “It is not just \u200babout revenue and jobs,” he said. “Countries like the UAE do \u200bnot produce \u2060gold but built refining capacity to stimulate broader economic growth. We want to create the same value chain.”<\/p>\n Guinea is preparing a decree to encourage local refining and plans reforms to formalise \u2060artisanal \u200bproduction and improve traceability by 2026, Sylla and Toure \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n The refinery, structured as a public-private partnership, is part of a wider push to develop downstream industries, mirroring\u00a0similar \u200befforts\u00a0in Guinea’s bauxite sector, they added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Guinea aims to become a regional gold \u200brefining hub, its mines minister said, joining a broader push by West \u200cAfrican producers to process bullion locally rather than exporting it to the Middle East and beyond. The move underscores efforts to retain more value at home as gold prices remain high. “If each (West African) country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"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","show_comment_section":"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":[2362,3028,27],"tags":[5230,248],"class_list":["post-21247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-mining","category-west-africa","tag-bouna-sylla","tag-guinea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21247","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21249,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21247\/revisions\/21249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}