Gold Mining Areas in Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Botswana

The main gold mining areas in Uganda are Busia in the southeast, on the belt shared with Kenya; Mubende in the centre; Buhweju in the southwest; and Karamoja in the northeast. Almost all of Uganda’s mined gold has come from artisanal miners, and the first large-scale mine, Wagagai at Busia, was commissioned in August 2025. Around this core, this guide covers gold in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Botswana, three smaller producers with real greenstone geology, and adds short notes on Mongolia and Mauritania.

Try it: Gold headline check: what grade does a claimed discovery imply? →

This page is for licence holders, explorers and investors. It uses the USGS Minerals Yearbooks for each country, Uganda’s Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines (DGSM), Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources, and peer-reviewed work on the Lake Victoria goldfields. Mines are named only as geological examples with sources; nothing here is a resource estimate. For gold deposit types and prospecting methods in general, see our guide to mining prospecting for gold.

One headline needs dealing with first, because it dominates searches about Uganda’s gold. In June 2022 the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development’s spokesperson announced 31 million tonnes of gold ore, from which some 320,158 tonnes of refined gold could be extracted. That second figure is about a hundred years of world mine production. The calculator below shows why geologists doubted it, and what realistic grades would give instead.

“Uganda’s first large-scale gold mine, at Busia, is planned to produce about 1.2 tonnes of gold a year.”

Gold mining areas in Uganda: where the gold is

Uganda’s gold geology is the northern edge of the Lake Victoria goldfields. A peer-reviewed synthesis in Episodes by Henckel and co-authors places the Busia-Kakamega greenstone belt on the northern edge of the Tanzania craton, running from western Kenya into Uganda, and records that the Ugandan portion produced no more than 30,000 to 45,000 ounces in Busia district between 1937 and 1952. The belt’s Kenyan side, by contrast, hosted the Rosterman mine, which produced more than 250,000 ounces.

The gold mining areas in Uganda that recur in official and survey sources are these:

The table gives the gold mining areas in Uganda as a working map, not a licence register. The USGS Yearbook estimated Uganda’s mined gold at 3,400 kg in 2015 and 2016, 2,500 kg in 2017, 1,500 kg in 2018 and 2,400 kg in 2019, noting that artisanal and small-scale miners accounted for all or most of it. Output rose in 2019 because artisanal sites reopened.

Busia: the best-documented of the gold mining areas in Uganda

Busia is where Ugandan gold is best understood. DGSM’s account of the Wagagai commissioning on 16 August 2025 records that gold was first discovered artisanally in 1915 and officially documented in 1932, that it occurs in auriferous quartz veins and banded iron formations, and that the deposit lies in the Archaean greenstone belt that extends into Kenya and Tanzania. The ministry expects the project to produce about 1.2 tonnes of gold a year, with the commissioning covering phase 2 of a four-phase plan.

For an explorer, that geology is familiar: it is the same Nyanzian-type greenstone, iron formation and shear-vein setting that hosts Geita and Bulyanhulu across the border in Tanzania, although at a far smaller known scale so far.

Mubende, Buhweju and Karamoja: the artisanal gold mining areas in Uganda

The USGS estimated that about 65,000 artisanal miners were producing gold in Karamoja and Mubende districts at the end of 2019. In Mubende, at least 60,000 were evicted in August 2017 because they were working on an exploration licence held by AUC Mining Uganda; by 2019 miners were permitted to work about 30% of that concession. In Buhweju, at least 10,000 artisanal miners were working in October 2017.

Karamoja is the least explored of the gold mining areas in Uganda and the one most often named in the 2022 announcement, which reported that the majority of the ore deposits were found there. That is a reason for systematic exploration, not a reason to assume a resource.

Checking a gold headline

The 2022 announcement is a useful teaching case for anyone assessing gold mining areas in Uganda or elsewhere. Enter the ore tonnes and the gold claimed, and the calculator gives the grade that would require; then try a realistic grade and recovery to see what the same ore would really hold.

Exploring the gold mining areas in Uganda: where to start

The geology argues for a clear order of work. Busia sits on a belt that continues into Kenya, where the Rosterman mine produced far more gold than Uganda’s side ever did, so the first question on any Busia-area licence is how the Kenyan structures and iron formations continue across the border. Banded iron formation is magnetic, which makes airborne and ground magnetics an efficient early tool, and the quartz-vein gold DGSM describes follows shears that can be traced on imagery.

Mubende, Buhweju and Karamoja are different problems. Each has many artisanal workings, which confirm gold but say nothing about size, and in Karamoja much of the ground has seen little modern exploration at all. There, regional screening to find the structures and alteration worth sampling comes before anything else.

Due diligence on Ugandan gold ground

1. Check the licence on the DGSM cadastre map: type, holder, area and expiry.
2. Ask for data, not headlines: maps, soil and rock assays with lab certificates, trench and drill logs.
3. Count the people: Mubende showed that artisanal miners on an exploration licence can number in the tens of thousands.
4. Test the arithmetic: divide any claimed gold by the claimed ore, as in the calculator above.
5. Confirm the export route: refinery and dealer licences are separate titles under the 2022 Act.

Licences for the gold mining areas in Uganda

Mineral rights in Uganda are administered by the Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines under the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development. The Mining and Minerals Act, 2022 replaced the Mining Act of 2003 and introduced a ladder from prospecting, exploration and retention licences to large, medium and small-scale mining licences, artisanal mining licences, and dealer and refining licences. Applications and the public cadastre map are on the DGSM portal; new applicants self-register online and existing holders register in person, as our mining cadastre portal guide by country explains.

Uganda’s artisanal and small-scale titles are covered in more detail, with plot sizes and eligibility, in our guide to artisanal and small-scale mining permits.

Uganda against its neighbours

One more comparison is worth making before looking west. The Kenyan side of the Busia-Kakamega belt has a longer mining record than the Ugandan side, as the Rosterman figures show, so cross-border geology is often the best guide to what a Ugandan licence near Busia might hold.

Scale helps. Tanzania, on the same craton, reported 61.6 tonnes of gold in 2024 on Ministry of Minerals figures, from belts that have had decades of modern exploration and large mines. Uganda’s estimated 2.4 tonnes of mined gold in 2019 and Wagagai’s planned 1.2 tonnes a year are a small fraction of that. The gap is partly geology, since most of the craton’s greenstone lies in Tanzania, and partly exploration history: the gold mining areas in Uganda have seen far fewer drill metres.

Terms used in this guide

Greenstone belt

A strip of ancient volcanic and sedimentary rock between granites; the host of most gold in all six countries here.

Banded iron formation (BIF)

Layered iron-rich rock; a gold host at Busia and Baomahun, and easy to trace with magnetics.

Artisanal mining

Small-scale, largely manual mining; the source of most gold in Uganda and Sierra Leone.

Refined gold vs mined gold

A refinery can process gold from many countries, so its output is not a measure of domestic mining.

Class C licence

Liberia’s artisanal mining licence, on plots of up to 25 acres.

Gold in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is better known for diamonds, but it has Archaean greenstone belts with gold. The Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources’ key-minerals note records that gold was discovered at several localities from 1926 onwards, in the Sula Mountains and Kangari Hills and in the Koinadugu, Tonkolili and Bo districts. It states that all of the country’s greenstone belts, with the possible exception of the Marampa Group and perhaps the Kambui Hills, are known to contain gold, and that rivers draining them carry gold too.

• Lode deposits named by the ministry: Lake Sonfon area, Kalmaro, Makong, Baomahun and Komahun.
• Belts: the Sula Mountains and Kangari Hills belts, with the Nimini and Gori Hills also cited in published summaries.
• Output: the USGS estimated artisanal gold at 446 kg in 2018 and about 120 kg in 2019; the ministry note said production then came only from alluvial deposits.
• Regulator: the National Minerals Agency and its Mining Cadastre Office, under the Mines and Minerals Development Act, 2022; the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources sets policy.

Company work at Baomahun, reported publicly, describes gold in steeply dipping sulphide pods and lenses, in zones up to about 20 metres thick, where banded iron formation meets the surrounding metasediments of the Kangari Hills-Sula Mountains belt. That is a classic greenstone setting and a useful template for the other belts.

For explorers, the ministry’s own view that the country is “thought to be well-endowed with gold” is matched by very little modern production, which is exactly the gap satellite screening and systematic soil sampling are meant to close. Sierra Leone’s diamond fields in Kono, Kenema and Bo are covered in our diamond exploration guide.

Gold in Liberia

Liberia produces gold at both industrial and artisanal scale. The USGS Yearbook for Liberia records total production of about 4,900 kg in 2019, down from 7,096 kg in 2018, on Central Bank of Liberia figures, with gold making up about 40% of export receipts. The New Liberty mine, about 90 km from Monrovia, produced 1,662 kg in the first nine months of 2019. A mineral development agreement over about 2,000 km² for 25 years covered the Dugbe project in southeastern Liberia, planned at about 3,900 kg a year over a 20-year life.

Liberia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy licenses mineral rights under the Minerals and Mining Law, 2000. In late 2019 it launched a programme to formalise artisanal mining, with a moratorium on new Class C (small-scale) licences and a ban on dredges in rivers used for gold and diamond mining. Applications now go only through the ministry’s online repository at portal.mme.gov.lr. Mining licences come in three classes: Class A for large-scale mining, Class B for small-scale industrial mining, and Class C for artisanal work on plots of up to 25 acres.

Gold and mining areas in Botswana

Botswana is a diamond country with a small gold industry. The USGS Yearbook for Botswana records gold output of 756 kg in 2015, 1,105 kg in 2018 and 943 kg in 2019, from large-scale mining. The main gold operation listed is the Mupane mine, about 30 km southeast of Francistown, in the northeast where Botswana’s greenstone rocks occur.

The main mining areas in Botswana, on the same Yearbook, are the diamond mines of Jwaneng, Orapa, Letlhakane and Damtshaa (Debswana) and Karowe; coal at Morupule; salt and soda ash at Sua Pan; the old nickel-copper district at Selebi-Phikwe, whose remaining resources were low grade and at least 2 km deep; and copper-silver in the North-West District, including Khoemacau. Licences are issued through the Ministry of Minerals and Energy’s online mining cadastre.

Short notes: gold in Mongolia and Mauritania

Two countries outside Africa’s greenstone belts also turn up in searches. In Mongolia, the USGS Yearbook recorded gold output of 16,251 kg in 2019. The Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in the South Gobi was the leading producer, at 7,520 kg, with gold reserves of 227 t in the open pit and 170 t in the Hugo Dummett North underground project. Placer gold is worked at Zaamar in Tov Aimag. The Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority (MRPAM) administers the country’s geological resources.

Mauritania’s mineral resources, according to its ministry as cited by the USGS, included 1.5 billion tonnes of iron ore and 780 tonnes of gold. Gold output rose 57% to 14,484 kg in 2019, of which the Tasiast mine, 300 km north of Nouakchott, produced 12,164 kg; Guelb Moghrein produced 1,389 kg of gold with copper. Artisanal mining with metal detectors was legalised in a designated 1,791 km² zone in Inchiri under a 2016 decree, and artisanal miners sold 1,049 kg to the government in 2019.

Ranking ground in these gold frontiers

What these countries share is under-explored greenstone and basement geology, thick weathering in places, and many artisanal workings that point to gold without measuring it. Our satellite-based mineral detection analyses multispectral and hyperspectral imagery of your licence or area of interest, where each mineral and alteration zone reflects light in its own spectral signature, and flags likely mineralised target zones, alteration halos, faults and fractures. It is how our satellite gold exploration work begins.

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• ⚠ Limits: results are exploration targets, not resources, and do not validate anyone else’s headline numbers.

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Frequently asked questions

Reviewed September 2026 against the USGS 2019 Minerals Yearbooks for Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Botswana, Mongolia and Mauritania, DGSM’s Wagagai commissioning notice and Mining and Minerals Act page, Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources key-minerals note, and Henckel et al. (2016) in Episodes.

Mines and deposits are named only as published geological examples; Farmonaut did not discover them and does not endorse any announced resource. Figures carry the dates shown and are revised by their publishers. Licensing bodies and laws change; confirm with each country’s authority. This guide is general information, not legal or investment advice.