By: The guardian

Global investors have committed over $2.45 billion to African gold mining deals that seem to exclude Nigeria, marking a renewed wave of confidence in the continent’s mineral potential.
  
This is coming amidst rising prices of gold in the international market as Citi raised its gold price forecast to $3,500 per ounce for the next three months from $3,300.
  
On Monday, gold moved up $36.8 to $3,436.1 per ounce. Citi expected the trading range to $3,300-$3,600 from $3,100–$3,500, given deteriorating U.S. growth and inflation outlook.
  
Despite efforts by the government, Nigeria’s 21.37 tonnes or 754,000 ounces of estimated gold reserves, currently worth $2.5 billion at the current market rate, have consistently been marked into private pockets amidst insecurity in deposit zones like Zamfara. 
  
While Nigeria fights back against illegal miners, between May 2024 and July 2025, the price of gold moved from $2,352.84 per ounce to $3,436.1, four years after the launch of the Presidential Artisanal Gold Mining Development Initiative (PAGMI). 

The surge in financing, driven by sustained global demand, high gold prices, and Africa’s untapped reserves, signals a moment for the continent, now the world’s second-largest gold-producing region after China.
 
Among the standout deals this year is Asante Gold’s $470 million financing package, backed by Appian Capital and FirstRand Bank, aimed at expanding the Chirano Mine and advancing the Bibiani Project in Ghana, Africa’s top gold producer and the sixth-largest globally.
 
Also in June, the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa approved a $35 million loan to Theta Gold Mines to accelerate work on its $77 million Transvaal Gold Mining Estate in Mpumalanga.
 
A month earlier, Africa Finance Corporation announced a €100 million loan to Mota–Engil Africa, supporting gold infrastructure in the Ivory Coast and Mali.
 
China’s Zijin Mining joined the fray with a major gold streaming initiative targeting $200–400 million in foreign direct investment (FDI) across its African assets. The programme began with a $125 million investment in the Koné Project operated by Montage Gold in the Ivory Coast.
  
Australian miner Perseus Mining committed $124.6 million for the underground development of its Yaouré Mine in the Ivory Coast and approved a substantial $523 million investment in the Nyanzaga Project in Tanzania.
  
From the Gulf region, UAE-based Ambrosia Investment Holding completed a $375 million deal for a 50 per cent stake in Allied Gold’s operations in Ethiopia and Mali, fueling the company’s ongoing expansion plans.
 
Stakeholders had maintained that millions of dollars worth of gold in Nigeria is still being stolen from the country, even as states where resources are domiciled continued to wallow in abject poverty, including the inability to pay salaries.

With the revelation that high-profile Nigerians and foreign bodies are illegally carting the country’s gold away in private jets despite a ban on the export of raw solid minerals, industry players said unless the illegal mining in Zamfara, Borno, Osun and other parts of the country is treated like the criminality of oil theft in the Niger Delta, the country would continue to experience an exodus of solid minerals while the country borrows to finance developmental plans.