BILLIONS of dollars in gold is smuggled out of Africa each year and most of it ends up in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where it is refined and sold to customers around the world, according to a new report.

Gold worth over $30 billion (around £24bn) was smuggled out of the continent in 2022, according to the report published on  Thursday by Swissaid, an aid and development group based in Switzerland.

The main destinations were the UAE, Turkey and Switzerland.

The authors of the report said their goal was to make the trade in African gold more transparent and to put pressure on industry players to do more to make gold supplies traceable and supply chains more responsible.

Yvan Schulz, one of the report’s authors, said: “We hope that this will improve the living conditions of local populations and the working conditions of artisanal miners throughout Africa.”

Between 32 per cent and 41 per cent of the gold produced in Africa is not declared, the report found.

In 2022, Ghana was the largest gold producer in Africa, followed by Mali and South Africa, it said.

The UAE was by far the top destination for smuggled gold, the report said, with some 405 metric tons of undeclared output from Africa ending up there. 

The United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database, which contains detailed imports and exports statistics, shows that Switzerland is the main buyer of gold from the UAE. 

An official in the UAE government’s media office said the country had taken significant steps to address concerns about gold smuggling and the risks it poses. 

The report called on non-African states to publish the identity of the countries of origin and the countries of dispatch of imported gold, and to work with authorities to identify illicit gold flows.