(Sept 15): Kenya will ban exports of unprocessed minerals and plans to build at least three refineries to purify gold, joining other African nations seeking to extract more value from the natural resources they produce.

“We’re going to make it illegal for anybody to export gold from Kenya if it’s not processed and through approved government channels,” Kenya President William Ruto told reporters in the western city of Kisumu on Monday. “That’s what Ghana did and what Zimbabwe has done and that is how we are going to do it in Kenya. And not just for gold, for all minerals that we are mining in Kenya.”

The announcement follows a dispute with a unit of India’s Tata Group that led the government to withdraw a century-old soda-ash concession from the company earlier this month.

African nations are increasingly trying to assert more control of their natural resources to capture more value, boost employment and increase government revenue. Ghana last year established a gold board that is the sole authorised buyer of the metal from small-scale miners — a move that helped boost Ghana’s international reserves by US$3.9 billion (RM15.9 billion) by the end of 2025.

In Zimbabwe, an arm of the central bank has been made the sole buyer of the nation’s gold and earlier this month the country banned some mineral exports to force mining companies to refine more materials locally.

Large-scale miners in Kenya include Shanta Gold Kenya Ltd, Karebe Gold Mining Ltd, Kilimapesa Gold Ltd, a subsidiary of Goldplat plc, and Red Rock Resources plc’s Migori Gold Project.

The East African nation plans to establish three refineries in the gold-mining region of Kakamega and in the capital, Nairobi, Ruto said. The Central Bank of Kenya will have first priority under a domestic gold-purchasing programme, he said.

The State Department for Mining estimates Kenya produces about 300kg of gold a month, translating into about 36 billion shillings (RM1.13 billion) of unregulated transactions annually. Because unregulated artisanal and small-scale miners account for more than 90% of gold production, the government is being denied potential royalties of 1.2 billion shillings a year.

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