African mining sector in 2025: projects, sovereignty and life after mine closure.

Against a backdrop of record gold prices, 2025 was not a year of spectacular rupture but one of quiet consolidation for Africa’s mining sector. New gold capacities, more sovereign regulatory frameworks, the first concrete uses of digitalisation and growing questions around mine closure have combined to shape a more structured, but also more demanding, landscape.

This 2025 overview of the African mining sector does not claim to cover all the projects and decisions that marked the year, but it does highlight several key trends. In West Africa, gold remains the central engine, supported by an exceptional price environment. At the same time, states are refining their legal frameworks, operators are accelerating the shift towards the “augmented mine”, and the issue of site closure is gradually emerging as a decisive test of governance quality.

Gold projects: plans taking shape

In 2025, the West African gold sector evolved in an exceptional price environment, with the price of an ounce of gold breaking through and then consolidating above the USD 4,000 mark in the final quarter (see box). In this favourable context, the year was nonetheless marked less by major announcements than by the point at which several existing projects reached decisive milestones.

In Ghana, Newmont’s Ahafo North project officially entered commercial production towards the end of the year. This new asset complements the group’s footprint around the Ahafo complex and reinforces the country’s position as a major gold jurisdiction. For both the authorities and the operator, the challenge now is to turn this investment into a lasting anchor in terms of jobs, local contracts and tax revenues.

In Guinea, the restart of Kiniero illustrates another facet of regional momentum. A former mine placed on care and maintenance in the mid-2010s, the site is being brought back into operation by Robex, with the construction of a new processing plant and first gold targeted in the very near term. This return to production comes as the company moves closer to other players operating in the country, signalling a gradual consolidation among mid-tier producers.

In Mali, the Syama mine does not represent a new opening but rather an industrial ramp-up. Resolute continues to implement the Syama Sulphide Conversion Project, designed to adapt the plant to sulphide ores and increase processing capacity. After a tense fiscal episode in 2024, the group clarified its regional governance with a change in leadership under its new CEO, Christopher Eger. The aim is to deliver the final phase of the project within the framework of the new Mining Code, while ensuring operational continuity and stability. Syama thus illustrates a broader trend in which operators are investing as much in modernising existing assets as in developing new deposits.

Reforms and governance: sovereignty as the common thread

In 2025, debates on mining governance took the form less of sweeping new legislation than of the practical implementation of reforms already underway. In several countries, the priority is no longer simply to attract investment at any cost, but to stabilise a framework that allows more value to be retained within the national economy without undermining sectoral momentum.

In Mali, the new Mining Code adopted in 2023 and the Local Content Law have begun to be translated into implementing regulations. Decrees issued in 2024 clarify reporting obligations, categories of goods and services reserved for local companies, and the role of the Permanent Secretariat responsible for monitoring local content. At the same time, tax audits and the settlement of disputes with certain operators reflect a clear determination to secure public revenues derived from gold.

Burkina Faso follows a similar path, with the adoption in 2024 of a new mining code and a specific local content law. Here too, the message is clear: national institutions intend to demonstrate their capacity to design and manage the sector’s legal framework themselves, while keeping the country within the circle of attractive mining jurisdictions.

In Ghana, another heavyweight of African gold, changes have been more gradual but no less significant. The strengthening of local content rules, the announced revision of certain parameters of the mining regime and the desire to better channel benefits to mining communities all point in the same direction: ensuring that gold revenues translate more visibly into jobs, local contracts and infrastructure.

For many observers across the continent, these shifts do not amount to a simple reflex of “resource nationalism”, but rather to a deliberate turn towards sovereignty. The key issue for both states and companies will now be predictability: the ability to apply these new rules over time in a consistent, transparent and consultative manner.

The first available figures suggest that this sovereignty shift is not merely theoretical. In Mali, the authorities report having already recovered more than CFA 760 billion in arrears from mining companies and estimate that nearly CFA 585 billion per year in additional revenue could result from applying the 2023 Mining Code to ongoing operations. In Senegal, local companies captured more than CFA 82 billion in market share in the mining sector in 2024 thanks to local content, while the Ivorian government now devotes specific workshops to rolling out its own policy. These advances are nonetheless accompanied by new challenges, such as combating “shell companies” that claim local content status without meeting their social and fiscal obligations.

Technology and innovation: from showcase to practical use

In 2025, technology remained a ubiquitous buzzword at African mining conferences, but the difference compared with previous years lies elsewhere. Beyond presentations on artificial intelligence and digitalisation, concrete applications are beginning to emerge, tested on the ground, even if their diffusion remains highly uneven depending on countries and the size of operators.

In exploration, several groups and junior companies have reported using AI models to cross-reference geological data, drilling histories and satellite imagery, with the aim of reducing discovery timelines and costs. Presentations at African Mining Week 2025 highlighted improvements in target definition accuracy, enabling drilling budgets to be focused on the most promising areas.

At producing sites, the rollout of integrated control centres and predictive maintenance continues to gather pace. Sensors, real-time monitoring and performance-tracking algorithms are increasingly used to anticipate equipment failures, optimise energy consumption and limit unplanned shutdowns. Several African case studies point to measurable reductions in downtime and maintenance costs when such systems are properly deployed.

Technology is also playing a growing role in compliance and security. Remote sensing, satellite imagery and drones are now used to monitor pit expansion, track land use around sites, identify illicit mining activities and document environmental footprints. In West Africa, the combination of drones and image-analysis tools is already feeding into efforts to combat illegal gold mining, in a context of very high gold prices.

For the time being, this “augmented mine” remains concentrated among a handful of major operators and pilot projects. However, the trend appears difficult to reverse. As states themselves digitalise cadastres and licensing procedures, the entire African mining value chain is gradually being drawn towards more data, greater traceability and enhanced decision-support tools.

Challenges: thinking beyond mine closure to avoid its impact

In 2025, part of the mining debate in Africa is no longer focused solely on opening new sites, but on what happens when operations come to an end. As highlighted in issue 8 of POINT FOCUS, mine closure remains a complex process at the crossroads of environmental management, public finance and the future of local territories.

From an environmental perspective, recent events are a reminder that mining legacies are not a thing of the past. The collapse in 2022 of the Jagersfontein tailings dam in South Africa, which released millions of cubic metres of toxic sludge and destroyed homes and farmland, was still the subject of investigations and legal proceedings in 2025. In Zambia, a massive discharge of acidic effluents into a tributary of the Kafue River in February 2025 was described as having “killed” a river overnight, disrupting water access for hundreds of thousands of people. These incidents illustrate the thin line between end-of-life operations, abandoned sites and industrial disaster.

Mali offers an instructive case. As a relatively young mining country, it long operated under the assumption that closure was a distant concern. The example of Morila, where a planned shutdown turned into an extension of operations, highlighted both the potential for conversion towards agribusiness and the fragility of such scenarios when strategic choices shift. The reform initiated in 2023 now emphasises detailed closure plans, backed by escrow accounts dedicated to rehabilitation and extended civil liability for title holders after operations cease.

Beyond technical considerations, the central issue remains the socio-economic transition of communities. Training administrations to assess closure plans, involving local populations in defining post-mining futures, supporting workers’ transitions to other sectors and financing micro-projects or alternative activities are all conditions for preventing mine closure from translating into local collapse. Behind every announced closure lies an entire chain of stakeholders that must learn to prepare for the future while the mine is still operating.

Between project implementation, the strengthening of reforms, the advance of digital mining and growing demands around post-mining, 2025 appears less as a dramatic turning point than as a pivotal year. It is on this foundation that what comes next will be decided.