Egypt’s gold boom: Mining, Sudan and selling the family jewels

In January and February 2025, Egypt exported as much gold as in the first nine months of 2024. Exports reached $3.2bn in the first quarter, the United Arab Emirates accounting for $1.85bn of that in January and February alone – a staggering 2,746% jump from $65m in the same period a year earlier. Exports to Switzerland in the first quarter rose by nearly 50%.

Record exports have been accompanied by foreign investment in the promising industry.

In September 2024, gold giant AngloGold Ashanti acquired Centamin, operator of Egypt’s Sukari mine, one of the country’s key gold assets, in a $2.5bn stock-and-cash deal.

Canadian firm Aton Resources and the Egyptian Mineral Resources Authority (EMRA) have established the Abu Marawat Gold Mines joint venture company to exploit discoveries in the Eastern Desert. In early 2024, the government indicated that the Abu Marawat discovery could contain a strategic reserve of up to 290,000 tons of gold. 

In April 2025, the World Mining Union – a subsidiary of the Saudi Gold Refinery Group – announced plans to seek a license to explore for gold and other minerals in the Eastern Desert.

Meanwhile, the interest of external companies has led the Shalateen Mineral Resources Company – a joint-stock company with state-backed shareholders – to seek global partners via a gold exploration tender. 

What is driving the surge?

The surge in exports and investor interest reflects more than just new mining output. From household gold sales amid economic strain to the overspill of the war in Sudan, Egypt’s gold boom has multiple causes.

One primary driver is Egypt’s search for new sources of growth amid a challenging economic environment.

“In the current context of economic crisis, the authorities are concentrating on generating foreign revenues in multiple ways, particularly through the exploitation of natural resources. Their goal is to boost dollar liquidity, which they need to repay external debt and meet imports,” Riccardo Fabiani, North Africa’s project director at the International Crisis Group, tells African Business.

“And gold allows Egypt to generate hard currency while keeping the domestic context unchanged.”

Although headline inflation has eased from a peak of 38% in September 2023, it still remains stubbornly above the central bank’s 5-9% target. Coupled with the ongoing weakness of the Egyptian pound and a ballooning external debt, these pressures continue to weigh heavily on the economy.

Plans to exploit the nation’s gold reserves, says Ahmed Soliman in a report for Chatham House, can be traced back to the period between 2020 and 2023, when Egypt “sought to reinforce its currency and increase its access to foreign exchange by expanding gold reserves”. 

A major step in this direction came in 2020, when the Egyptian parliament approved amendments to the Mineral Resources Law, removing the profit-sharing requirement under which the government claimed around 50% of profits from foreign companies operating in Egypt. Following the reforms, in April 2021, EMRA signed 15 contracts involving seven companies to explore for gold across 30 areas. 

“Recent reporting shows that Egypt is really growing its mineral sector quite substantially, and to do so by over 100% year-on-year from last year is pretty strong growth,” Soliman tells African Business.

“It’s still a large way behind Africa’s top gold producers, which remain South Africa and Ghana. However there are many other producers in Africa that are quite unstable…so Egypt could emerge as a more stable exporter. That would also help in terms of economic reconstruction of neighbouring countries, especially Sudan, strengthening those less illicit trade pathways for gold to arrive into Egypt.”

The same economic forces pushing the government to double down on the sector are also leading hard-pressed Egyptian households to part with their gold by selling family heirlooms. 

Ihab Wasef, head of the Gold and Jewellery Division at the Metallurgical Industries Chamber of the Federation of Industries in Egypt, notes that much of the raw material used in the local manufacturing of jewellery comes from the public’s existing gold items. 

Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, tells African Business that “part of it is likely the fact that poverty is rising and many Egyptians, particularly Egyptian women, store emergency savings in gold. So, if families are running into hardship, women may be selling their gold to help raise funds to cover family expenses,” he says. 

Sudan’s reluctant contribution 

Egypt’s gold boom cannot be understood without bringing Sudanese gold into the picture.

Sudan’s gold has long been tied to the financing of both warring factions, prolonging the conflict. Much of it ends up in the United Arab Emirates – the main destination for smuggled African gold in 2022, according to SwissAid.

While Sudanese gold is smuggled through virtually all neighbouring countries and using a wide variety of strategies, Soliman’s Chatham House report concluded that “much of the production from SAF-controlled areas is likely to have been exported to Egypt […] to prevent it from being sent directly to the UAE, which it accuses of supporting the RSF.”

While no reliable data exists on the exact volumes reaching Egypt, SwissAid has suggested that some gold declared as “recycled” in Egypt may have originated from Sudanese mines. Soliman additionally highlights a policy shift that may have eased these flows: in May 2023, one month after the Sudanese war began, Egypt scrapped all customs duties and taxes on gold imports – including unprocessed gold – regardless of source, quantity or method of procurement.

“The policy coincided with the displacement of over 1.5 million Sudanese into Egypt, many of whom have taken gold with them and used it as a barter through which to travel and to trade,” says Soliman.

The UAE’s crucial role

The absence of formal gold import logs or traceability mechanisms makes it difficult to determine how much gold crossing the border is licit.

These transparency issues are not unique to Sudan-related flows – in an earlier report by SwissAid, the organisation noted a number of discrepancies in Egypt’s gold exports to Canada. However the organisation ended up attributing it to a likely “error in Egypt’s customs declarations, more specifically an erroneous indication of the country of destination.”

Such clerical errors may seem minor, yet they highlight blind spots in the country’s gold trade that can be exploited by the illegal trade.

Still, there are indications that the UAE is hoping to move away from the illicit trade. An anonymous gold researcher tells African Business that the UAE may be ramping up legal flows from Egypt as a way to “clean up its image”, having become “a laundering spot for gold.”

As the largest importer Egyptian jewellery and gemstones in 2024, the UAE it has an important role to play in helping to clean up Egypt’s gold supply chain. It has launched efforts with Nigeria to ensure imports from the country are legal.

Soliman argues that, “if developed in the right way and with the right regulations,” the Egyptian gold industry could benefit from global interest to seek better practices and distance itself from the Sudanese war economy, which would “tackle some of the issues around conflict, gold and minerals.”

Riding the golden wave 

Egypt’s gold sector expansion is unfolding against a backdrop of rising global prices and heightened investor interest in safe-haven assets.

In February 2025 Goldman Sachs raised its year-end gold price target to $3,100 per ounce due to central bank purchases and inflows into bullion-backed exchange-traded funds. The bank’s analysts Lina Thomas and Dan Struyven wrote that if uncertainty surrounding economic policies, including tariffs, persists, gold could reach $3,300 per ounce. The latter figure implies a 26% annual gain, according to Bloomberg calculations.

The Egyptian economy stands to benefit, even if the gold sector is just part of a bigger equation. 

“Gold is likely to be one ingredient in a more complex recipe that includes oil and gas, land sales, tourism and some manufacturing in special economic zones,” says International Crisis Group’s Fabiani.

With investor interest high and exports soaring, gold offers a chance to re-anchor the economy. But to truly turn it into a pillar of recovery, Egypt will need to balance growth with regulation, transparency, and foresight.