ENACT Africa on 22nd February asks this question, saying that gold has become one of Uganda’s top exports, but multiple question marks surround this glittering trade. A June 2017 report by environmental NGO Global Witness found that minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan pass through Uganda on their way to international markets and that an 18-month investigation exposed “endemic corruption and mismanagement in the country’s fledgling mining sector”. The gold trade was worth $200 million to the Ugandan economy last year, but there are no official figures on where the gold came from, or where it is going, according to the NGO. Another UN report in August 2017 identified Uganda as major transit route for the illicit smuggling of gold from the DRC to the UAE. In 2017 authorities in the DRC estimated that 20 tonnes of gold from artisanal mining is smuggled out of the DRC every year.
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