Gold-Digigng Mali Fights Mining Companies

Gold-Digging: Mali Fights Mining Companies To Battle Rebels and Terrorists Mali Last week, Mali’s military government seized more than $117 million worth of gold from Canada’s Barrick Mining’s Loulo-Gounkoto gold complex with the aim of restarting operations there. The move is part of efforts by Mali – and other countries in West Africa – to take over foreign-owned gold mines. Aiding in that effort, a Malian court recently allowed the government to restart operations at the mine, which produced around 720,000 ounces of gold in 2024, Mining.com reported. Officials had suspended Barrick’s management in a dispute related to local mining codes and allegedly unpaid taxes. Mali’s military government, which won power through a coup in 2020, is a major shareholder in the company, which is a massive source of foreign cash for the impoverished country. If gold prices continue to soar amid disruptions in the global financial system, the mine could generate more than $1 billion next year, wrote Reuters. Barrick has sought to negotiate. Malian authorities also arrested Barrick employees and seized three tons of gold bullion from the company over their regulatory and tax disputes. In a similar case, an Australian mining company late last year paid Mali at least $80 million to release their chief executive and two employees, reported France 24. Foreign miners in the country are worried, added African Business. Locally sourced miners don’t necessarily have the expertise or access to capital to run all the country’s mines. Regardless, the mineral resources are already financing new infrastructure and civil services that are essential to develop local economies in Mali, noted Université des Sciences Sociales et de Gestion de Bamako researcher, Mamadou Camara. But he still hoped those riches would fuel sustainable investments and “equitable exploitation” under more direct Malian government control, even those that remain inaccessible due to an insurgency. “Mali is rich in mineral resources – the country has vast untapped potential throughout its territory,” he said. “However, security issues in the north hinder exploration and mining activities. Some areas remain unassigned to companies due to ongoing insecurity.” Malian President Assimi Goïta, who led the 2020 coup and was recently granted a new five-year, perpetually renewable term in office without elections, as Al Jazeera explained, is fighting rebel movements and jihadists seeking to control swaths of its vast interior, much of it part of the Sahara desert. Al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin recently launched attacks on seven military outposts in western Mali, for instance, the BBC reported. The group, meanwhile, has been rampaging across Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, while also abducting foreigners and demanding ransoms for their release, the Times of India added. Their leader, alleged war criminal Iyad Ag Ghali, is an ethnic Tuareg who staged an uprising against Mali’s central government in 2012 to establish an independent Tuareg state called Azawad. Goïta has called in 2,000 mercenaries from Russia’s Africa Corps – formerly the Wagner Group but now controlled by the Kremlin – to help combat the jihadists and rebels, France 24 reported. At the same time, the mercenary group is accused of committing war crimes in the region. Mali has been fighting insurgent groups linked to the so-called Islamic State and al Qaeda for more than a decade, trying to prevent them from holding onto or even increasing their territory even as they attempt to expand to the West African coast: This would allow them to significantly boost their revenue through human trafficking, smuggling and arms trading with other parts of Africa, Europe and elsewhere. In May, Gen. Michael Langley, who leads the US Africa Command, warned that the Sahel, has become the “epicenter of terrorism on the globe.”