About 100,000 people turned back from Guinea's gold-mining areas were in Bamako and nearly 60,000 more were at the Kourémalé border crossing, Mali's interministerial crisis committee said on November 7, as reported by the news site La Nouvelle Tribune. They arrived after Guinea banned unregulated artisanal gold mining on November 2. Most are from Burkina Faso and Mali. Mali deployed 74 trucks and 24 buses from November 6 to carry about 15,000 people on to Burkina Faso.
Analysis: The arrivals bring a large pool of workers to a sector that produced about 6 metric tons of Mali's 48.2 tons of gold in 2025, or 12%, according to provisional figures reported by Reuters and APA. The convoys organized so far cover about 15,000 people, fewer than one in ten of those counted, by our calculation. The statement does not say how many arrivals are Malian or whether they will look for work at Malian gold sites. If many do, demand for licensed artisanal sites in the Kayes and Sikasso regions could rise. No date has been set for the end of the convoy operation.
Source: Various, La Nouvelle Tribune, 'Mali : près de 160 000 personnes refoulées de Guinée, six décès enregistrés', November 7, 2026, reporting a communiqué of Mali's interministerial crisis and disaster management committee (published by CECOGEC, November 7, 2026), as of November 7, 2026 and from November 6, 2026 and November 2, 2026; Reuters, Mines ministry provisional figures (as reported by Reuters), 2025; APA News, APA, 'Mali : l’Office de l’or artisanal entre en activité' (APA - Bamako, October 10, 2026), reporting OMASP's first board meeting on October 7, 2026; the April 10 ordinance creating OMASP was not opened, 2025