In Summary:
- An Instagram post that garnered over 2,000 reactions claims that Liberia recorded a gold production as high as 376,000 ounces in 2022
- We have verified this claim by reviewing authoritative and credible reports and found it to be mostly correct.
- Gold production in Liberia rose significantly by 49.1% in 2022, reaching 376,754 ounces, up from 252,708 ounces in 2021.
On September 16, an Instagram user identified as Ahmed Kaballo posted a video documentary on his page titled “Profit over People Liberia’s Gold Dilemma” by African Stream. The post claims that Liberia recorded a gold production of 376,000 ounces in 2022. The post gained over 1,400 likes, 91 comments, 294 comments and over 700 shares.
Kaballo made the claim while stating that a village, which was once a thriving rural community, is now suffering displacement and pollution due to illicit gold mining amid the country’s record gold output.
Claim
The post claims: “While Liberia recorded a gold production high of 376,000 ounces in 2022, local villagers in Mat House say they’ve received nothing but poisoned land and polluted rivers.”
Rating Justification
To fact-check this claim, we searched for the LEITI report. LEITI is the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and is part of the EITI – a global Standard to promote the open and accountable management of extractive resources.
LEITI works through a Secretariat guided by a multi-stakeholder arrangement comprising the government, civil society organizations, and private companies to improve the governance of the extractive sector in Liberia.
In the 15th LEITI report published in December 2023 covering the period July 2021 to 31 December 2022, it is established under Section 2.3 [Production and exports data] on Page 19 that Liberia produced and shipped 14,092 kilograms of gold by the end of December that year.
We converted the 14,092kg to ounces by multiplying the mass volume, 14,092, by 35.274 and got 497,080.67oz. This means the country produced 497,080.6oz of gold during that period.
Please note that this report covers a period of 18 months and not exactly one year.
We also reviewed the 2022 Annual Report of the Central Bank of Liberia. The report, which outlines the state of the economy across various sectors, notes on Page 34 that gold production rose significantly by 49.1% in 2022, reaching 376,754 ounces or 10680.7kg, up from 252,708 ounces in 2021.
This increase was attributed to expanded operations by industrial mining companies, according to the report.
Conclusion
Based on the review of these two authoritative sources, we conclude that Ahmed Kaballo’s claim on Instagram that Liberia recorded a gold production high of approximately 376,000 ounces in 2022 is mostly correct.
According to the 15th Report, Liberia produced and exported 497,080.7 ounces of gold between July 2021 and December 2022, while the Central Bank of Liberia also reported that the country produced 376,754 ounces of gold just in 2022.
