Ethiopia: Abiy Ahmed inaugurates a 600-ton refinery to stop exporting raw gold

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed inaugurated the National Precious Metals Refinery on October 10, 2026, Ethiopia's first precious metals refinery, located in the Bole Lemi Special Economic Zone in Addis Ababa. At full capacity, the plant is expected to process more than 600 tons of precious metals per year, according to Ethiopian state media cited by the Fana agency.

Majority public capital

The ownership structure brings together Ethiopian Investment Holdings, the state sovereign wealth fund, which holds 51% of the plant, and the company Sam Precious Metals, which owns 49%. The investment amount has not been made public, and authorities have not specified the volume the refinery is actually processing today, nor the timeline for ramping up to the announced 600 tons.

"At least 10 billion" instead of 6

Before his guests, Abiy Ahmed laid out the equation in figures: Ethiopia exported between $5.6 and $6 billion worth of gold last year, but these revenues could have reached at least $10 billion if the metal had been refined within the country, he stated according to the Rio Times. Officials also mentioned an export potential that could rise to $80 billion per year: a long-term projection, not a forecast.

The logic is well-known to all mining countries on the continent. As long as ore is exported raw, the smelting, refining, certification, and resale—that is to say, the profit margin—take place elsewhere, in refineries in Europe, the Gulf, or Asia. Ethiopia, where artisanal mining accounts for a significant portion of supply, wants to retain this value and the hard currency that comes with it, at a time when it is still negotiating the restructuring of its external debt, including the Eurobond on which it defaulted in 2023.

A battle that has become continental

Addis Ababa thus joins a growing list: several African states are now making the export of their minerals conditional on local processing, from gold to lithium and shea butter. The true measure of success will not be the ribbon cut, but the tonnage actually refined at Bole Lemi in a year, the number of skilled jobs created, and the share of revenue that will remain in the country. The announcement of a capacity is not yet an industry.