Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: UGANDA’S gold exports leaped 75.8% last year from the previous 12 months, helped by record prices that attracted new dealers into the sector, Uganda’s central bank said on January 20.
Gold has surpassed coffee as the east-African country’s biggest export and source of foreign exchange.
In 2025, Uganda shipped bullion worth $5.8 billion, up from $3.3 billion in 2024, Adam Mugume, the Bank of Uganda’s executive director for research and economic analysis, told Reuters, partly attributing the increase to the soaring international gold prices.
Uganda has emerged in recent years as a processing and trading centre for gold shipped in from neighbours including eastern Democratic Republic Congo, South Sudan and other areas, as Uganda produces little gold of its own. The price of gold rose more than 64% in 2025 as global geopolitical tensions drove a surge in demand for the safe-haven metal.
“The attractive gold prices have incentivised new entrants into the business, generating a significant volume of exports,” Mugume said. Last year, Uganda inaugurated its first large-scale gold mine, a $250 million Chinese-owned project in eastern Uganda. According to reports over the past year, gold has consistently accounted for nearly half of the country’s total dollar export earnings, vastly overshadowing the contributions of coffee exports or any other total agricultural exports from Uganda.
Coffee production employs over 3 million individuals, either directly or indirectly. In stark contrast, the gold industry’s workforce is minuscule in Uganda, barely reaching the 10,000 people.
The Uganda’s gold export boom began in July 2017, and since then, the pace has not slowed.
