Resolute Mining and Guinea’s state-owned Nimba Mining Company have formed a joint venture, Landaya Gold, headquartered in Conakry, to assess, explore and potentially develop gold-bearing areas in Guinea. The announcement, made Friday, moves the two companies beyond the framework agreed in a March memorandum of understanding, under which technical teams had committed to report on mineral exploration targets within 90 days.
This is Nimba’s first partnership with an internationally listed gold producer. It fits Guinea’s stated ambition, under its Simandou 2040 programme, to diversify state mining revenue beyond bauxite. Resolute already operates two mines in the region, Syama in Mali and Mako in Senegal, and is developing the Doropo project in Ivory Coast. A Guinean foothold would add a fourth West African asset, and potentially the company’s fourth operating mine overall.
Both sides frame the deal around local content and state value capture. Nimba’s managing director, Patrice L’Huillier, said the venture would build local expertise and create long-term value for the state and communities. Resolute has said the same partnership could support that fourth mine, tying its own growth pipeline to Guinea’s push to formalize state participation in projects run with foreign operators, an approach already visible in bauxite through the state’s exclusive offtake arrangement with Glencore. The distinction worth holding onto: forming Landaya Gold creates a vehicle to explore and assess, not a commitment to build a mine. No reserve estimate, resource figure or development timeline has been disclosed.
The near-term test is whether the joint venture’s technical teams identify targets that justify moving from assessment to a binding development agreement, and whether that process holds to the timelines set in March. Longer term, the venture is one more data point in Guinea’s broader wager, visible also in its Glencore bauxite tender and its separate mining convention with Nimba, that formalizing state-linked partnerships with established international operators can accelerate diversification without ceding full control of the resource base.