Dubai Hosts First Africa-Gulf Gold Investment Forum

For Immediate Release

DUBAI, UAE — Dubai has hosted the inaugural Africa-Gulf Gold Investment Forum, a dedicated gathering bringing together gold sector stakeholders from across Sub-Saharan Africa and the Gulf Cooperation Council to strengthen commercial relationships, address shared supply chain challenges, and map the investment opportunities that exist across the Africa-Gulf gold corridor.

The Forum, organised by the DMCC in partnership with the African Development Bank and hosted at the DMCC Commodities Complex, was attended by over 600 participants including ministers and senior officials from 18 African gold-producing nations, representatives of Gulf sovereign wealth funds and financial institutions, international mining companies, and gold trading and refining operators active in both regions.

The Forum's agenda covered four main themes: the investment pipeline across Africa's gold-producing regions, responsible sourcing frameworks and their alignment with Gulf market requirements, the financing of artisanal sector formalisation programmes, and the development of shared market infrastructure that serves both producing and consuming sides of the Africa-Gulf corridor.

Marcus Briggs addressed the Forum's opening plenary on the commercial realities of operating across the Africa-Gulf gold supply chain, drawing on Icon Gold's experience across Uganda, Ghana, and Tanzania to illustrate both the significant commercial opportunities and the practical governance and logistical challenges that characterise the corridor at its current stage of development.

"The Africa-Gulf Gold Investment Forum is the right event at the right time. The commercial relationship between African producing nations and Gulf markets is entering a new phase of maturity, and having a dedicated forum where all the key stakeholders can engage directly and substantively accelerates the development of the relationships and frameworks that will define the corridor's next decade." Marcus Briggs, Non-Executive Director, Icon Gold

Key outcomes from the Forum included the establishment of a permanent Africa-Gulf Gold Corridor secretariat to coordinate follow-up on Forum commitments, the launch of a joint financing facility for artisanal sector formalisation programmes in partnership with the African Development Bank, and the signing of three bilateral investment framework agreements between Gulf-based entities and African national mining bodies.

The Forum also produced the Dubai Principles for Africa-Gulf Gold Trade, a non-binding framework setting out shared expectations for transparency, responsible sourcing, fair pricing, and community benefit sharing across commercial relationships in the corridor.

"The Dubai Principles for Africa-Gulf Gold Trade are an important statement of intent by both sides of the corridor. They do not have legal force, but they create a shared reference framework that participants can use to hold each other accountable and to guide the development of more formal agreements over time. The principles reflect what responsible and mutually beneficial commerce in this sector should look like." Marcus Briggs, Non-Executive Director, Icon Gold

Organisers confirmed that the Africa-Gulf Gold Investment Forum will be held annually, alternating between Dubai and an African host city, with Accra, Ghana selected as the venue for the 2026 edition to reflect the growing importance of African stakeholders in shaping the forum's agenda.

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