Gold has quietly become one of the world’s most decisive commodities in the 21st century.
As inflation erodes currencies, geopolitical tensions unsettle markets, and technological innovation accelerates, gold has regained its global significance not only as a financial haven but also crucial resource for electronics, medical equipment, renewable energy, and the artificial intelligence revolution.
Yet in the East African region, gold is increasingly telling a very different story; instead of unlocking industrial growth and broad-based development, it is amplifying pre-existing governance challenges.
The region stretching across Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, the DRC borderlands, and parts of Tanzania is among the most mineral-rich on the continent. But rather than serving as a pillar of economic transformation, gold is increasingly tied to political instability, unregulated trade, and violent competition.
Ethiopia provides one of the most striking examples, in Tigray, unofficial mining has resurfaced at former East Africa Metals sites despite the company classifying them as inactive.
Reports indicate that former combatants and Chinese-linked operators are extracting gold without state supervision.
The interim government has attempted interventions, but fragmented authority and persistent insecurity have made regulation nearly impossible. As global gold prices continue their dramatic rise, the incentives for illicit mining only deepen.
Sudan shows the cost of failure even more starkly. Gold has become one of the financial lifelines of the ongoing conflict, allowing rival factions to bankroll prolonged violence.
In the border regions between Uganda, the DRC, and South Sudan, smuggling routes have become so entrenched that vast quantities of gold leave the region without ever passing through formal trading systems.
Billions of dollars in value are being siphoned away while mining communities remain impoverished, vulnerable, and environmentally degraded.
This is not because the region lacks potential; it is because governance has not kept pace with opportunity.
Where formal structures are weak, gold enriches a narrow circle of actors, including political elites, criminal entrepreneurs and foreign brokers, while national economies lose revenue that could fund infrastructure, schools, healthcare, and industrial development.
The irony is painful: some of Africa’s richest geology sits beneath some of its poorest citizens.
Other African countries show that a more hopeful path is possible; for instance, Ghana’s leadership in formalizing artisanal and small-scale mining has strengthened compliance and boosted national revenue.
South Africa’s long-standing mining systems, though not without challenges, demonstrate how structured governance and infrastructure can sustain a mineral-based economy.
Where governments set the rules and enforce them, mining becomes a force for stability rather than instability.
Even within East Africa, progress is possible. Tanzania offers a glimpse of what responsible mineral management can look like. Centralized mineral trading centres, improved regulatory oversight, and strategic investment in transport corridors, such as participation in the Lobito Corridor, have enabled the country to align its mineral sector with development priorities.
The logic is simple: when miners have safe, legal, and profitable routes to market, smuggling declines, government revenue increases, and private investment follows. Infrastructure is not just an economic need; it is a security mechanism.
Meanwhile, global demand for gold is only growing, and central banks are increasing reserves to protect currencies from volatility. High-tech manufacturers are competing for a reliable supply.
The artificial intelligence revolution, powered by advanced microelectronics, will require more gold than previous generations of technology.
East Africa sits on deposits that could position it at the centre of this global economic wave.
The question is not whether the region has the resources; it is whether it will build the governance systems required to benefit from them.
The region stands at a crossroads, gold can continue to fuel informal networks, conflict dynamics, and environmental destruction, or it can become a foundation for industrial growth, export strength, and broad-based prosperity.
Choosing the latter requires political courage and long-term strategy, formalizing the mining sector rather than tolerating its informality, investing in logistics and processing infrastructure rather than allowing porous borders to dictate the trade, and ensuring that gold revenues reach national budgets and mining communities rather than disappearing into the shadows.
The region does not need to reinvent mining; it needs to control it better. East Africa has the deposits to anchor its economic future.
It now needs the leadership to ensure that the people who live above them finally benefit from the wealth beneath their feet.
The writer is a mining consultant at Geomine Consulting Group.
