Côte d’Ivoire’s gold sector has long held promise.
Its neighbours Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ghana have substantial reserves, and geologists have often suggested that similarly rich deposits were plausible in Côte d’Ivoire too.
On 2 May, Canadian-headquartered Montage Gold announced that its Koné project, in the northwestern departments of Kani and Dianra, as the largest gold mine in Côte d’Ivoire and the third largest mine of its kind in West Africa. The mine has reserves of around 5 million ounces and is due to start production in 2027.
“If the estimates are accurate, this would enable the country to increase its yearly national gold production by roughly 20% once the project is underway. This could have significant repercussions on government revenues in the long term”, says Bryon Cabrol, Sub-Saharan African analyst at Dragonfly Intelligence.
The discovery is big news for Côte d’Ivoire, whose economy was for many years dominated by cocoa production.
Côte d’Ivoire is the world’s largest producer of cocoa, and the sector employs nearly 1 million farmers, who provide an income to 5 million people, around one fifth of the Ivorian population. It is the country’s leading foreign exchange earner and is the cornerstone of the Ivorian economy.