Gold in Tanzania

In the year to June 2026 Tanzania exported USD 5.52 billion of gold, according to the Bank of Tanzania, up 36 per cent on the year before. That was about 47 per cent of all the goods the country sold abroad. It was more than tobacco, coffee and every manufactured export combined, and more than tourism earned (about USD 4.3 billion in the year to March 2026).

The growth has been steep. In 2019 gold was worth about 40 per cent of a much smaller export total, some USD 5.6 billion in all. Since then output has risen, the world price has risen sharply, and gold has become the single fact that most shapes Tanzania's foreign earnings.

Official production for the 2025/26 financial year was 67.8 tonnes, worth TSh 18.4 trillion, according to figures the Commissioner for Minerals gave Parliament's energy and minerals committee in August 2026.

Gold is one part of a wider mining economy. For the laws, the other minerals and the state's stake in the mines, see Mining in Tanzania.

Gold was mined here before independence, and even before the British. The first gold mine in the territory opened at Sekenke, in present-day Singida, in 1909. In the First World War, cut off by a British naval blockade, the German administration had Sekenke gold struck into the 1916 fifteen-rupee coin at a temporary mint in Tabora.

In the 1920s a rush on the Lupa goldfields drew prospectors south-west, and Mbeya was founded as the town that served them. In 1936 a mine opened at Geita, south of Lake Victoria. It produced more than a million ounces before financial trouble closed it in 1965.

The modern industry dates from the turn of the century. Geita reopened in 2000, and North Mara began production in 2002. A string of large mines followed around the southern and eastern shores of Lake Victoria, and within two decades the Lake Zone had become the centre of Tanzanian mining.

Three large mines dominate, and all of them are in the Lake Zone.

Geita, in Geita Region, is an open-pit and underground operation run by AngloGold Ashanti. In 2019, the last year the US Geological Survey broke output down by mine, it was the country's largest producer, at about 18,800 kg (18.8 tonnes). Geita Region was created in 2012, with the mining town as its capital.

North Mara, in Tarime District, Mara, and Bulyanhulu, near Kahama in Shinyanga, are run by Barrick through Twiga Minerals, its joint company with the government. Barrick holds 84 per cent of each mine and the state 16 per cent, and the two sides split the economic benefits 50/50. North Mara has a long record of disputes with neighbouring villages, which the Mara guide describes. A third Barrick mine, Buzwagi near Kahama, reached the end of its life and closed in 2022.

The next one is under construction. Nyanzaga, being built by the Australian company Perseus Mining in Sengerema, Mwanza Region, is expected to pour its first gold in early 2027. It is described as the first major new gold mine in Tanzania in about twenty years.

Alongside the big mines is a far larger workforce: artisanal and small-scale miners, digging and processing gold by hand on thousands of claims. The government's own action plan puts the number engaged in artisanal gold mining at more than 1.2 million people. They work in Geita and the rest of the Lake Zone, in Chunya in Mbeya, and across the goldfields of the west and centre.

For most of their history these miners sold informally, and much of their gold left the country unrecorded. In March 2019 the government opened mineral-trading centres in mining districts so that small-scale gold could be sold legally close to the pits. Recorded sales rose from 337 kg in 2016 to 4,660 kg in 2019.

Small-scale gold has a serious cost in mercury. Miners mix it with crushed ore to bind the gold, then burn it off, often at home and without protection. The government's National Action Plan for artisanal gold mining (2020–2025), written under the Minamata Convention on mercury, estimated that the sector uses 13 to 24 tonnes of mercury a year, and set out to reduce it through safer processing methods and formalisation.

Most Tanzanian gold used to be refined abroad. That is changing. The Mwanza Precious Metals Refinery, inaugurated on 13 June 2021, was the country's first gold refinery, with a working capacity of 480 kg a day, and others have followed in Geita and Dodoma. By 2025/26, 28,701 kg of gold was sold through five domestic refineries.

Most of that went to the Bank of Tanzania. Since October 2024 miners and dealers have been required to offer at least 20 per cent of their gold to the central bank, which pays market prices in shillings. In 2025/26 the Bank bought 21,710 kg, which was 75.6 per cent of the gold sold through the refineries, and by June 2026 it held about 27.5 tonnes.

The logic is simple. Gold bought with shillings becomes a foreign reserve without the country having to earn dollars first. The cost is that the price the Bank pays, and the amount it holds, now move with the world gold market.

In short: the Lake Zone for the big mines, with small-scale gold much more widely spread. Each region guide has a line on it.

Geita — the Geita mine and dense small-scale diggings. Mara — North Mara, at Tarime. Shinyanga — Bulyanhulu, and the closed Buzwagi, near Kahama. Mwanza — Nyanzaga, under construction, and the refinery. Mbeya — the old Lupa goldfields around Chunya. Singida — Sekenke, the first mine of all.