Artisanal Gold · Africa
Formalise and sell your gold internationally.
Artisanal and small-scale miners produce roughly 20% of the world's gold. Most of it enters informal channels — local buyers paying 60–70% of spot, border smuggling, unlicensed intermediaries. Formalisation changes this. With the right documentation, your gold can reach international buyers paying 90–95% of spot, settled through a bank within 10 business days.
The artisanal gold seller's challenge
ASM — artisanal and small-scale mining — accounts for an estimated 20% of global gold production, or roughly 600 tonnes per year. It employs between 15 and 20 million people across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In Africa alone, ASM produces significant proportions of national gold output in countries including Ghana, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the DRC, and Sudan.
Despite this scale, the majority of ASM gold enters the market through informal channels. The local cash buyer — typically a small trader or unlicensed dealer — pays somewhere between 60% and 70% of international spot price. The seller absorbs the full discount because they lack the documentation or the channel access to reach a buyer who pays more. Across millions of transactions and hundreds of tonnes of gold each year, that discount represents an enormous transfer of value from African producers to the informal trade.
The path out of that discount is formalisation. A licensed, documented ASM producer — or an aggregator working with licensed miners — can access the same international buyers that large mining companies use. The price differential between 65% of spot (informal) and 93% of spot (licensed international buyer) is the difference between survival-level economics and a genuinely viable business. That gap is worth understanding in detail.
The formalisation pathway
The specific steps vary by country, and the regulatory environment for ASM differs significantly across African jurisdictions. Some countries have well-established ASM licensing frameworks; others are still developing them. The general pathway, however, follows the same structure in most countries:
Obtain an ASM mining licence
Apply to your national mineral authority. This is the foundation document — it establishes your legal right to mine. Without it, every subsequent step is impossible. Processing times vary from weeks to months depending on jurisdiction.
Declare your production
Most African countries require licensed ASM producers to sell through or declare production to a government-approved body or licensed dealer. This is not optional — undeclared production is contraband and will not cross an international border.
Engage a licensed assayer
An independent assay certificate from an accredited laboratory — stating weight, fineness, and bar identification — is required by every international buyer. It is also required by your country's export authority to determine the export value for permit calculation.
Work with a licensed exporter
Unless you hold an export licence yourself, you will need a licensed exporter — a company with a mineral export permit — to handle the cross-border transaction. The exporter is the named party on the export permit; they take on the compliance responsibility for the transaction.
Country-specific notes on the relevant government bodies for the major ASM-producing nations:
Ghana
Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) — the state-mandated buyer and exporter for ASM gold. Licensed small-scale miners are required to sell through PMMC or hold an independent export permit.
Zimbabwe
Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR) — a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Artisanal producers must sell to FPR at the prescribed price. FPR holds the national gold export monopoly.
Ethiopia
National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) — licensed artisanal and small-scale miners sell gold to the NBE through approved commercial banks, which pass it to the NBE for export.
Sudan
Sudanese Mineral Resources Company (SMRC) — the primary government purchasing body. Sudan's ASM sector is the country's largest source of gold output; SMRC holds the central role in formalised purchasing.
If your country is not listed — Tanzania, DRC, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and others all have active ASM sectors — WhatsApp us. We have country-specific guidance for the major producing nations and can advise on the regulatory pathway relevant to your situation.
What happens after formalisation
With a licensed exporter and complete documentation — assay certificate, export permit, certificate of export, and specialist carrier engagement — your gold can reach an international buyer within 10 business days of the transaction being agreed. Price: within USD 5,000 per kilogram of LBMA international spot. At current spot prices, that is approximately USD 93,000 per kilogram.
To put that in concrete terms: an artisanal producer selling 1kg through an informal local buyer at 65% of spot receives approximately USD 64,000. The same kilogram sold through a documented international transaction at USD 5,000 below spot generates approximately USD 93,000. That is a difference of USD 29,000 per kilogram — purely from formalisation and channel access.
At 10 kilograms — the size of OnePiece's active buyer mandate — the difference between informal and formal pricing is approximately USD 290,000. These are not marginal gains. They are the difference between a subsistence operation and a fundable business.
Settlement is through bank escrow or confirmed letter of credit. Funds are released to the exporter's bank account on delivery and verification at the buyer's facility. There is no direct wire before delivery, and there is no informal payment channel. This is how documented international commodity transactions work, and it is what protects sellers as much as buyers.
If you are already formalised
If you hold an ASM licence, work with a licensed exporter, and have access to independent assay — or if you are an aggregator who buys from licensed producers and holds an export permit — you may already qualify for our active buyer mandate without any additional formalisation steps.
Our current mandate is for 10 kilograms of investment-grade gold (99.5% purity or above) from any African country of origin. The buyer is a Malaysian institutional operator — a licensed bullion dealer in Kuala Lumpur. Price is USD 5,000 per kilogram below LBMA international spot. Settlement via bank escrow. Close within 10 business days of documentation being complete.
To find out whether your supply qualifies, WhatsApp +60 19-873 8500 and tell us: your country, the weight available, the form (bar, cast bar, dust, nugget), and your documentation status. We respond the same business day. If you are a match, we move to a qualification call within 24 hours.
Formalised ASM gold wanted. One message to start.
10kg active mandate from a Malaysian institutional buyer. Investment-grade, any African origin, bank escrow settlement. If you have an export permit and independent assay, you may already qualify. WhatsApp us with your country, weight, form, and documentation status.
WhatsApp +60 19-873 8500