Swissaid, a development aid and advocacy organization, conducted an analysis that revealed 435 tons of gold—mostly from small-scale miners—were smuggled out of Africa in 2022 for a total value of almost $30 billion Image Courtesy Reuters
A research released on Thursday claims that over the past ten years, there has been a significant increase in the illicit removal of hundreds of tonnes of gold worth tens of billions of dollars from Africa, mostly to the United Arab Emirates.
Swissaid, a development aid and advocacy organization, conducted an analysis that revealed 435 tons of gold—mostly from small-scale miners—were smuggled out of Africa in 2022 for a total value of almost $30 billion.
The UAE, which received 405 tonnes of illicit gold from Africa in 2022, was the primary destination, according to Swissaid. According to the organization, approximately 2,500 tonnes of illegally obtained gold worth over $115 billion were accepted by the UAE during the preceding ten years.
The scale of the flow underscores how small scale, or artisanal, mining has mushroomed into an industry involving millions of people producing volumes of gold on a par with or even bigger than industrial mining.
In 2019, a Reuters investigation found that billions of dollars’ worth of gold was being smuggled out of Africa every year through the UAE, which served a gateway to markets in Europe, the United States and beyond.
Governments and academics have cautioned that smuggling of this magnitude suggests a sizable parallel illicit economy susceptible to possible money laundering, financing of terrorism, and sanctions evasion in addition to the loss of tax revenues.
One of the report’s authors, Marc Ummel, the commodities lead at Swissaid, claimed that the UAE aids in gold laundering since it allows significant amounts of gold that are smuggled to become legally recognized by passing through the country.
Swissaid conducted an analysis by contrasting the aggregate gold exports from all African nations with the gold imports into non-African nations. The organization discovered mistakes by cross-referencing the data with figures given by trade associations and by meeting with governments and refineries. It also filled in gaps in UN Comtrade data with statistics specific to each country.
The other two main nations that import a lot of African gold are Switzerland and India, where there are no such differences between declared imports and declared exports.
According to the Swissaid research, 12 African nations were implicated in the smuggling of 20 tonnes or more annually.
People are turning to artisanal mining in greater numbers as a result of the double increase in gold prices since 2009. According to Swissaid’s estimations, between 443 and 596 tons of gold were generated in 2022 by artisanal and small-scale gold mining in African nations.
Over 70% of this amount is not reported.
In contrast, the annual production of gold by industrial miners has been approximately 500 tons.
According to the report, artisanal and small-scale informal mining accounts for the majority of the annual import of African gold into the United Arab Emirates. Millions of Africans depend on these techniques for their livelihood, yet the environment and local populations frequently suffer greatly as a result.
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