The original store of value. Gold has backed currencies, crowned kings and filled central bank vaults for thousands of years, and it never tarnishes.
All the gold ever mined, around 216,000 tonnes, would fit in a single cube about 22 metres on each side.
Gold is so dense that a standard 12.4 kg bar is about the size of a paperback book. It is also so malleable that a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of around one square metre.
West Africa is one of the world’s great gold regions. Ghana is Africa’s largest producer, and Côte d’Ivoire has become one of the fastest-growing gold countries on the continent.
Most gold ore holds only a few grams per tonne, invisible to the eye.
Gold is leached, recovered and poured on site into doré bars, a mix of gold and silver.
Refiners produce 400 oz bars of about 12.4 kg, the standard of the London market.
Gold is priced in US dollars per troy ounce (31.1 g). The LBMA Gold Price, set twice a day in London, is the global reference, alongside COMEX futures in New York.
In 1324, Mansa Musa, ruler of the West African Mali Empire, travelled to Mecca with a caravan carrying tonnes of gold. He gave away so much in Cairo that the price of gold there fell for years afterwards.