The policy – effective immediately – comes after Guinea’s President Mamadi Doumbouya met industrial and artisanal gold producers and buyers, and aims to boost the economy and create more jobs.

“Guinea will now require its gold to be processed within its own borders. Raw gold will no longer leave Guinea,” he said, adding that other countries have been reaping the economic benefits of processing and trading their raw materials.

Guinea is Africa’s sixth largest gold producer, according to the World Gold Council.

Other African nations have taken similar steps to increase domestic processing and value addition in the mining sector in recent years.

In Tanzania and Uganda, the export of unprocessed minerals and metals such as gold and copper is already banned, while Ghana is set to ban raw gold exports by 2030.

Africa’s top lithium producer, Zimbabwe, has banned concentrate exports of the metal used to make batteries from 2027.

Gold is one of Guinea’s main exports, shipping more than 22 tonnes of the metal in the first quarter of this year, according to the authorities.