GoldBod CEO Sammy Gyamfi is targeting $12 billion in annual gold revenue while pushing local refining deals.

Ghana's gold sector is in the middle of its biggest transformation in decades and GoldBod CEO Sammy Gyamfi has been putting real numbers behind the ambition. Between a string of local refining deals and a bold $12 billion annual revenue target, here's where the strategy actually stands.

Lawyer Sammy Gyemfi

Lawyer Sammy Gyamfi first laid out the figure in an X (Formerly Twitter) Space interview, projecting that GoldBod would bring in about $6 billion by the end of that year, with confidence the institution would reach $12 billion in annual inflows the following year. The plan hinges on scaling up weekly gold purchases from artisanal and small-scale miners moving from roughly 1.5 tonnes a week to more than 3 tonnes by ramping up official buying channels.

That target isn't disconnected from what's already happened. Gold exports surged more than 50% in a recent year to hit $11.6 billion, with small-scale mining now contributing over 40% of Ghana's total gold output up from a historical average closer to one-third. Separately, Finance Minister Dr Ato Forson has projected that over the next three years, Ghana could mobilise around 127 tonnes of gold annually from the small-scale sector, worth more than $20 billion in foreign exchange at current prices, if volumes and prices hold.

Raising how much gold gets purchased is only half the equation the other half is what happens to it afterward. For decades, Ghana exported the overwhelming majority of its gold in raw, unrefined form, effectively shipping away the value-added refining step (and the jobs, tax revenue, and technical expertise that come with it) to foreign refiners.

GoldBod has moved aggressively to change that. It signed a landmark agreement with Gold Coast Refinery Ltd, an Egyptian firm, to refine at least one metric tonne of gold locally every week the country's first real local refining capacity in years. Notably, the facility itself had existed since its commissioning but had reportedly never refined a single ounce of gold in eight years, despite roughly 325 metric tonnes of raw gold being exported during that period. GoldBod also toured and began finalising a refining services partnership with Royal Ghana Gold Refinery, marking a second such deal.

CEO of GOLD BOARD

Gyamfi has been direct about the reasoning: "Ghana's minerals must be refined and secured within Ghana to prevent avoidable losses," he said, framing the shift as ending decades of exporting national wealth in raw form.

Beyond these initial refining partnerships, Gyamfi has announced plans for something far larger a proposed 600-tonne capacity gold refinery, which he says would rank among the biggest in the world and position Ghana as a serious gold-processing hub for the African continent. Construction was expected to begin later in the year the announcement was made, with completion targeted for 2027. The move aligns with President John Dramani Mahama's broader stated goal of ending the export of unrefined minerals from Ghana entirely by 2030.

The economic case GoldBod is making is straightforward: every gram refined abroad means paying a foreign refiner's fees, losing the jobs tied to that processing step, and exporting gold whose true purity and value can be harder to independently verify. Refining domestically to internationally recognised purity standards, with hallmarking involving GoldBod, the Ghana Standards Authority, and the Bank of Ghana keeps those costs and that verification process inside Ghana, while making Ghanaian gold more transparently tradable on international markets.

This all links directly to a story we've covered before: the tension between GoldBod's reported surplus and the Bank of Ghana's reported losses on the broader gold programme. Gyamfi has repeatedly pointed to one figure to make the case that the programme's benefits outweigh its costs regardless of the accounting dispute Ghana's foreign reserves climbed from about $9 billion in 2016 to a record roughly $12 billion in 2025, a shift he credits significantly to gold-backed foreign exchange inflows strengthening the Bank of Ghana's reserve position.