DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Billions of dollars worth of gold are smuggled out of Africa every year, with most of it ending up in the United Arab Emirates, where it is refined and sold to customers around the world, according to a report published Thursday.
More than $30 billion worth of gold, or more than 435 tons, was smuggled out of the continent in 2022, according to the report by Swissaid, an aid and development group based in Switzerland. The main destinations for African gold were the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Switzerland.
The report’s authors said their aim was to make trade in African gold more transparent and put pressure on industry players to do more to make gold supplies traceable and supply chains more accountable.
“We hope this will improve the living conditions of local people and the working conditions of artisanal miners across Africa,” Yvan Schulz, one of the report’s authors, told The Associated Press.
The report found that between 32% and 41% of gold produced in Africa was undeclared. In 2022, Ghana was the largest gold producer in Africa, followed by Mali and South Africa.
According to the report, the UAE was by far the top destination for smuggled gold, with around 405 tonnes of undeclared gold production from Africa ending up there. Over a ten-year period between 2012 and 2022, that amount was 2,569 tons of gold, worth about $115 billion. According to the report, the gap between imports from the UAE and exports from African countries has widened over the years, meaning that the amount of gold smuggled out of Africa appears to have increased over the past decade. For example, it has been expanded from 234 tons in 2020 to 405 tons in 2022.
Switzerland, another major buyer of African gold, imported about 21 tonnes of black gold from Africa in 2022, the report said. The actual figure could be much higher if African gold imported through third countries were taken into account, the report said, but once the gold is refined it is virtually impossible to control its flow to its final destination.
The United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database, which contains detailed import and export statistics, shows that Switzerland is the main buyer of gold from the UAE. “Buying gold from the UAE is notoriously risky,” the report said, detailing the difficulty in determining the origin of the refined gold.
An official within the UAE government’s media office said the country has taken significant steps to address concerns around gold smuggling and the risks it poses. The continued growth of the UAE’s gold market reflected the international community’s confidence in its processes, said the official, who commented on behalf of the country’s press service without providing further identification.
“The UAE remains steadfast in its efforts to combat gold smuggling and ensure the highest standards of transparency and accountability within the gold and precious metals sector,” the official said.
The Swiss government said it was aware of the challenges in identifying the origins of gold and had introduced measures to prevent illicit gold flows.
“Switzerland is and remains committed to improving the traceability of raw material flows, the transparency of statistics and the quality of controls,” said Fabian Maienfisch, spokesperson for the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.
The report compared export data from African countries with import data from non-African countries, along with other calculations, to extrapolate the data. Among its recommendations, it called on African states to take steps to formalize artisanal and small-scale mining and strengthen border controls. It also called on non-African states to reveal the identities of the countries of origin and countries of shipment of imported gold, and to cooperate with authorities to identify illicit gold flows.
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Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
