President Mamadi Doumbouya signed a decree, late on Friday, July 3, regulating Guinea’s entire gold sector, from extraction to export. The text, read on national television, turns into a binding legal obligation the announcement he made on June 19 at a meeting with industrial, semi-industrial, and artisanal gold operators.
The decree draws a precise technical line. Raw gold is defined as any gold extracted as ore, concentrate, doré, or alloy with a purity below 99.5%. Refined gold is any gold at or above that threshold, certified by an authorized refinery in Guinea. Once the threshold applies, exporting raw gold becomes prohibited across the entire national territory.
The text sets a 90-day transitional period from the date of publication. During this phase, raw gold exports remain exceptionally tolerated under a reinforced declaratory regime, provided operators submit a compliance plan to the Ministry of Mines. Contracts already signed can still be executed, subject to prior notification to the authorities.
The decree also requires mining title holders to prioritize supplying licensed refineries established in Guinea, within their processing capacity. Transactions must be based on international reference prices, with payment terms not exceeding 30 working days after certified delivery. All production, collection, refining, and export operations must be registered, in line with a traceability framework aligned with OECD guidance on responsible supply chains. Penalties range from suspension or withdrawal of authorizations to seizure of the gold quantities involved.
What to keep separate: the June 19 announcement was a political declaration, paired with a warning to operators. The July 3 decree is the legal instrument that makes it enforceable, with a timeline, technical definitions, and a sanctions framework.
The reading: this reform extends to gold the same logic already applied to bauxite. The framework rests on the Nimba Gold Refinery, under construction in Gbessia, on the outskirts of Conakry, which is meant to become the mandatory processing point for national production, both industrial and artisanal. Guinea exported roughly 69.3 tonnes of gold in 2025, according to World Gold Council data cited in reporting, making it the country’s second mineral export after bauxite. Production remains dominated by artisanal and semi-industrial mining, alongside one main industrial operator, Société Aurifère de Guinée, an AngloGold Ashanti subsidiary.
Worth watching: whether the Nimba Gold Refinery can actually absorb the full scale of national production by the end of the transitional period in early October, and how the tens of thousands of artisanal miners get folded into a now-formalized export chain.