Guinea has banned the export of unrefined gold with immediate effect, as President Mamadi Doumbouya moves to ensure that the country's gold is processed within its own borders before being sold abroad. Announcing the measure after meetings with both industrial and artisanal gold producers and buyers, Doumbouya said that other countries had long been reaping the economic benefits of refining and trading Guinea's raw materials. "Raw gold will no longer leave Guinea," he declared, adding that the Guinean people deserve to see their country's wealth contribute directly to national development.

To anchor the policy, authorities have announced that the Nimba Gold Refinery — the country's first gold refinery, nearing completion in the capital, Conakry — will soon become operational. With a reported capacity of 250 tonnes a year, the facility should be sufficient to handle Guinea's current gold output. Foreign mining companies operating in the country have been warned that violations of the new directive could result in the loss of their licences and the termination of their mining contracts.

The scale of the challenge, however, is significant. While Guinea exported around 22 tonnes of industrially mined gold in the first quarter of this year, artisanal miners — thousands of small-scale prospectors working largely in the Siguiri region near the borders with Mali and Côte d'Ivoire — accounted for roughly 50 tonnes of gold exports in 2025 alone. Bringing this informal sector into official processing channels is widely seen as the key test of the reform. According to Oumar Totiya Barry, director of Guinea's Observatory of Mines and Metals, the policy's success will depend on the state's ability to control exports at its borders and to renegotiate the conventions governing foreign mining companies.

Guinea's move reflects a broader trend across Africa. Tanzania and Uganda have already banned the export of unprocessed minerals including gold and copper, Ghana has set a similar deadline for 2030, and Zimbabwe — Africa's largest lithium producer — has banned concentrate exports of that metal from 2027. Guinea, itself the world's largest producer of bauxite, the ore used to make aluminium, is seeking to follow this path of resource nationalism and value addition as a route to greater economic development and job creation.