International mining companies are at the mercy of “terrifying” tactics from military regimes in Africa’s Sahel, whose leaders are using legal disputes, nationalisations and arrests to assert greater control over crucial minerals like gold and uranium.
Mali in recent months issued an arrest warrant for Barrick Gold chief executive Mark Bristow and detained Australian gold miner Resolute’s chief executive Terence Holohan for nearly two weeks. Authorities on Saturday even started seizing gold from Barrick, according to a company letter seen by the Financial Times.
Niger has also stripped mining rights to one of the world’s largest uranium reserves from French state-owned nuclear producer Orano, while Australia-based gold miner Sarama Resources has launched arbitration proceedings against Burkina Faso after the junta withdrew its exploration licence for a project.
The three countries are part of what is known as Africa’s “coup belt”, after being taken over by military juntas between 2020 and 2023.
Their more interventionist stance, according to people familiar with the regimes’ thinking, stems from a desire to assert national sovereignty after decades under the thumb of western miners and subject to contracts the new rulers view as tilted in favour of the companies.
They have been rewriting mining laws, demanding higher tax payments and larger ownership stakes in the industry, but have also resorted to restricting operations, issuing arrest warrants and detaining employees.
“It’s terrifying dealing with the regime [in Mali],” said one person involved in the negotiations, who asked for anonymity. “They’re building arbitrary cases against companies to force them to negotiate and threatening arrests.”
Niger’s government has said it is returning Orano’s mines “to the public domain of the state”. Ibrahim Traoré, Burkina Faso’s junta leader, said in October that “we know how to mine our gold and I don’t understand why we’re going to let multinationals come and mine it”.
The pressure tactics have turned into one of the biggest headaches facing the global mining industry at a time when companies around the world are trying to secure long-term uranium supplies and boost production of gold, whose price has risen to record highs.
These countries, part of the semi-arid strip south of the Sahara known as the Sahel, are among the world’s poorest but are rich in mineral resources.
Burkina Faso and Mali produced more than 200 tonnes of gold in 2023, according to the World Gold Council, with the latter the second largest on the continent. Niger has some of the world’s most significant uranium reserves and supplies a quarter of the EU’s demand for the metal.
They were taken over by military leaders after being wracked by violent Islamist insurgencies for more than a decade. This has led to a broader geopolitical realignment as the regimes shed their long-standing ties to former colonial power France — and the wider west — in favour of closer ties with Russia.
All three countries have kicked out French troops while Mali and Niger employ mercenary fighters from the Russian defence ministry-controlled Africa Corps, the formerly private Wagner Group. US forces left Niger last year.
Although some companies, including Toronto-listed B2Gold, Allied Gold and Robex Resources, have negotiated deals with the regimes, industry insiders said the situation was likely to worsen.
Canada’s Barrick, the world’s second-biggest gold miner by market capitalisation, said last week that it may have to shutter its Loulo-Gounkoto mining complex, which produced the company’s second highest gold output in 2023, after being restricted from shipping out of the site for seven weeks. The government also began carting off precious metal from the mine following a provisional court order, according to the letter seen by the FT. Barrick declined to comment.
The Malian government has also hired external advisers to lead negotiations on its behalf. People familiar with the process say Mamou Touré is leading the charge for the authorities. The veteran executive worked at London-listed miner Randgold for a decade before it merged with Barrick in 2018, prior to co-founding his own mining consultancy.
Touré confirmed he was working on the negotiations but declined to comment further. A western mining executive said Touré had convinced the Malian junta he could extract more money and concessions from the mining groups.
Finance minister Alousséni Sanou told parliament last week Mali was set to earn $1.2bn in the first quarter of the year following the revision of its mining laws.
New opportunities exist for international groups whose governments are allied with the Sahelian states. Ganfeng Lithium, China’s largest lithium producer and the world’s third biggest, opened a mine in southern Mali last month. Junta leader Assimi Goïta described China as a “strategic and sincere” partner.
Barrick’s decision to launch legal proceedings, despite being hesitant to bring arbitration claims in recent years, “shows you how bad it has got”, said one lawyer.
But as a company whose largest shareholder is the French government, Orano’s plight encapsulates the entanglement of big business and geopolitics in the Sahel.
Orano has run into a series of complications since soldiers from the presidential guard deposed pro-western former president Mohamed Bazoum in a 2023 coup, with relations between France and Niger deteriorating. France criticised Bazoum’s ousting, while junta leader General Omar Tchiani accused Paris of seeking to overthrow his new administration.
“The French state, through its head of state, has declared that it does not recognise the current authorities in Niger,” Colonel Abarchi Ousmane, Niger’s minister of mines, told Russian state newswire RIA Novosti. “Does it seem possible to you that we, the state of Niger, would allow French companies to continue extracting our natural resources?”
Orano reported a €133mn loss in the first half of 2024 because of problems with its uranium production in Niger. The company was stripped in June of its mining rights to the country’s Imouraren mine, and was forced in October to halt production at its Arlit mine due to financial pressures. Niger has stopped payments of its debt as joint venture partners since the coup and blocked uranium exports.
The company said it “intends to defend its rights with the competent authorities” and that “only a desire shared by all stakeholders to re-establish a stable and sustainable mode of operation will allow activities to resume serenely”. Last month, Orano opened arbitration proceedings against Niger.
Despite their “increasingly hardline approach”, said Mucahid Durmaz, analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, the cash-strapped military governments are eyeing miners as a “lucrative” source of extra revenue rather than trying to force them to “pack up and leave”.
But companies would have to get used to these tougher tactics, he added: “I’m expecting this wave of nationalist behaviour to become a norm in Sahel countries.”
Data visualisation and cartography by Aditi Bhandari
