By: Ecofin agency

Artisanal gold mining, long dismissed as a marginal and largely informal activity across Africa, is becoming one of the continent’s fastest-growing mining sectors as record gold prices reshape government policy and export strategies.

In Zambia, state-owned mining investment company ZCCM-IH announced on May 18 the creation of Kyalo Goldfields Limited (KGL), a joint venture with Mining Mineral Resources focused on developing gold deposits in the Kikonge area of Mufumbwe district.

ZCCM-IH will control 51% of the company, while its partner will hold the remaining 49%. The project is expected to rely on mechanized mining methods, but a central part of the strategy is also to bring artisanal miners into formal operations through tighter regulation and oversight of gold mining activity in the area.

The initiative reflects a broader effort by Zambia to organize a sector that still operates largely outside formal structures despite supporting more than 30,000 people nationwide.

Much of the country’s artisanal gold mining also still depends on mercury, a toxic metal widely used to extract gold. Since November 2024, the planetGOLD initiative — funded by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by the United Nations Environment Program — has worked with more than 11,000 miners in Zambia to reduce mercury use and support formalization efforts.

A New State-Led Gold Strategy Across Africa

Zambia is part of a much larger shift unfolding across the continent.Governments are increasingly moving to formalize artisanal mining, centralize gold purchases, and capture a greater share of export revenues from a sector that has historically escaped state control.

In Ghana, the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) became the country’s sole regulator and centralized buyer of artisanal gold in May 2025. The model helped Africa’s top gold producer export around 100 tons of artisanal gold during the year, generating about $10 billion in revenue — nearly half of Ghana’s estimated $20 billion in gold export earnings in 2025.

Burkina Faso has followed a similar path. The creation of the National Precious Substances Company, which buys artisanal and semi-mechanized gold production, helped official artisanal output jump to 42 tons in 2025 from less than 10 tons a year earlier.

Artisanal mining also accounted for a record 40% of Burkina Faso’s total gold production of 94 tons. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the central bank has started building gold reserves using artisanal production collected through DRC Gold Trading, a state-owned company aiming to channel 15 tons of artisanal gold this year, up from 2.3 tons in 2024.

The country also inaugurated a pilot refinery in Kalemie in March 2026 with processing capacity estimated at between 500 and 600 kilograms per month.

Gold Prices Are Changing the Economics of Artisanal Mining

The main driver behind these efforts is simple: gold prices. Gold climbed about 70% in 2025 and has hovered near $5,000 an ounce in recent months, making artisanal mining more profitable than ever across Africa. For many governments, formalization is already translating into stronger export revenues and improved foreign-exchange reserves.

Artisanal gold is increasingly becoming a monetary tool as well. Central banks in countries including Ghana, Zimbabwe, and the DRC are now using locally sourced gold to build reserves.

But even as export figures surge, many of the sector’s structural problems remain unresolved.

In the DRC, for example, DRC Gold Trading exported only 1.75 tons of gold in 2024, far below its 12-ton target. According to local outlet Bankable, one reason was that official buying prices were not competitive enough, encouraging miners to continue selling through informal channels.

Official gold-buying offices also generally do not distinguish between gold produced under responsible environmental standards and gold coming from unregulated sites.

Working conditions remain another major issue. Deadly accidents continue to occur regularly at artisanal mining sites, while labor protections remain weak across much of the sector.

Taxation also remains a major blind spot. Although governments frequently highlight rising mining revenues linked to artisanal gold, the sector’s direct tax contribution remains poorly documented. Tax systems designed for small-scale miners — usually separate from those applied to industrial mines — remain difficult to enforce in a sector where informality still dominates.

Ghana illustrates the imbalance clearly. According to the Ghana Chamber of Mines, artisanal and small-scale operations produced more than 3 million ounces of gold in 2025, accounting for more than half of national production. Yet their direct tax contribution totaled less than 500,000 Ghanaian cedis during the year, compared with around 19 billion cedis paid by large industrial mining companies.

Governments are now increasingly focusing on traceability to strengthen oversight of the sector. In Ghana, GoldBod launched a pilot program in January 2026 covering 600 artisanal mining sites to verify that gold entering formal markets comes from responsible mining operations.

In the DRC, authorities are working to connect licensed gold-buying offices with the central bank and mining administration to allow real-time monitoring of traded volumes.

The tools already exist. The bigger challenge is whether African governments can enforce them strongly enough to turn artisanal gold into a stable, transparent, and fully traceable source of mining revenue.