Market — Africa
Sourcing gold from Africa, and where Kenya sits in it
African gold reaches international buyers through two very different chains: large-scale mine output committed to accredited refiners under long-term agreements, and artisanal and small-scale production that passes through local buyers and aggregators before export. The second chain supplies most of what is offered to new international buyers, and it is where provenance and documentation risk concentrate — which is precisely what a buyer's due diligence has to address.
Two chains, not one
| Large-scale mining | Artisanal and small-scale | |
|---|---|---|
| Producer | Licensed industrial operations with published reporting | Individual and small operator production at varying degrees of formalisation |
| Route to market | Direct offtake to accredited refiners | Local buyers, aggregators and dealers, then export |
| Documentation | Institutional, auditable, continuous | Assembled at aggregation; quality varies sharply |
| Available to a new buyer | Rarely — output is contracted | This is what is offered to most new international buyers |
| Principal risk | Commercial and price risk | Provenance, documentation, counterparty and authenticity risk |
Where the risk concentrates
- Aggregation, where material from many small sources is combined and individual provenance is lost unless deliberately recorded at each step.
- Cross-border movement before export, which is materially harder to document and which destination refiners will probe.
- Documentation assembled retrospectively to support an export, rather than accumulated during the chain.
- Informal cash purchasing upstream, which leaves no trail — a compliance problem at the destination even where nothing improper occurred.
The OECD Due Diligence Guidance exists because these are structural features of the chain rather than individual failings. Its five steps — management systems, risk identification, risk response, third-party audit at identified points, and public reporting — are the shape any credible answer to a provenance question takes.
What an East African origin means for a buyer
Kenya offers an established licensing framework under the Mining Act, 2016, a functioning commercial and banking centre in Nairobi, English-language commercial and legal documentation, and direct long-haul air freight. What it does not offer — and what no legitimate origin offers — is metal below the international benchmark.
- Ask which chain the material comes from, and expect a direct answer.
- Where the answer is artisanal in origin, ask what was done about the risks the OECD framework identifies, and what records exist from the point of purchase forward.
- Confirm your destination refiner's acceptance policy before shipment.
- Treat documentation depth as a commercial variable: material with a thin file is worth less, takes longer to place, and may not be placeable at all.
- Prefer counterparties who volunteer the difficult parts of the chain. Selective silence about upstream steps is itself a finding.
Verify: Country-level rules on artisanal formalisation, export licensing and beneficiation differ substantially across Africa and change over time. Confirm the current position for each origin with local counsel before contracting.
Questions
On African supply
Is African gold riskier than gold from other origins?
Why can't I buy directly from a mine?
Will my refiner accept material of this origin?
Next step
Looking to source gold from Kenya?
Tell us what you are looking for — form, quantity, purity and destination market — and our trade desk will tell you plainly whether we can serve it, and on what terms.
Monday to Friday, 08:00–17:00 East Africa Time (UTC+3)