Stakeholders across Africa’s finance and extractive industries are intensifying calls for deeper value addition and stronger integration of gold into the continent’s financial systems, highlighting its potential to strengthen economic resilience and build long-term wealth.
At the recently concluded Gold Roadshow Africa, Executive Director of Tropical General Investments Group, Mudassir Amray, described gold as “a metal of strategy” and “an inflation firewall,” stressing its rising importance in an increasingly unstable global economy.
Delivering a keynote address titled ‘The Bridge Between Trust, Value and Financial Sovereignty for Africa’, Amray noted that the unprecedented rally that pushed gold beyond $4,300 per ounce signals a major shift in global “trust, capital and power.”
“For years, gold was viewed primarily as a metal of beauty,” he said. “Today, it is politically neutral, instantly liquid, and a firewall against inflation and currency depreciation.”
Amray lamented Africa’s limited capture of gold’s financial value despite producing over 40 per cent of the world’s supply, noting that the continent secures less than two per cent of its full economic worth due to minimal local refining.
“We export raw and import finished wealth,” he said, urging African governments and investors to scale up refining capacity and integrate gold into domestic financial markets.
He also praised Kian Smith Gold Refinery for its role in strengthening local value addition, describing such initiatives as essential for achieving true “financial sovereignty for Africa.”
A panel session featuring Amray and Chapel Hill Denham CEO Bolaji Balogun, moderated by African Development Bank Senior Director Bode Oyetunde, explored the policy and structural reforms needed to embed gold into Nigeria’s financial ecosystem. The discussants underscored the importance of coherent regulations, infrastructure development, and increased private sector involvement.
The event concluded with a unified commitment by participants to harmonise national policies, attract long-term investment, and deepen gold processing across Africa—key steps toward inclusive, sustainable growth in the continent’s gold value chain.
