Africa’s lost wealth: billions worth of gold smuggled out each year

Over $30 billion worth of gold was smuggled out of Africa in 2022, primarily to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, and Switzerland, according to a new ground-breaking report by Swissaid that calls for more transparency and traceability in the gold supply chain to improve local conditions and artisanal miners’ working conditions throughout the continent.

While Africa is experiencing a gold rush, the glittering wealth produced by artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) largely remains in the shadows, as a whopping 321 to 474 tons of the precious metal, worth between $23.7 billion and $35 billion, are not declared each year, the new report by the Swiss-based aid and development group reveals.

These billions of dollars in gold are smuggled out of Africa each year, most of which ends up in the UAE, where it is refined and sold to customers around the world. Turkey and Switzerland are other two main buyers of African gold, the latter of which imported some 21 metric tons of undeclared gold from Africa in 2022, the report said.

The report aims to highlight the need to make the trade in African gold more transparent and put pressure on industry players to implement more measures to make gold supplies traceable and supply chains more responsible. “There is a lot more that needs to be done to formalize the sector and make sure that African states get a revenue from the trade of this gold,” notes Yvan Schulz, one of the report’s authors. ”We hope that this will improve the living conditions of local populations and the working conditions of artisanal miners throughout Africa.”