Gold is the most expensive it's ever been. But this modern-day gold rush is leading to consequences in Africa's gold-rich nations. In Liberia, foreign mining companies have moved in to extract the resource to meet the growing demand, but are leaving local communities to deal with the fallout, from polluted waterways to damaged land.
00:00Gold jewelry, gold skin care, and even gold-coated food.
00:05The allure of gold is nothing new,
00:09but the precious metal is the most expensive it's ever been.
00:14This is one kilo of gold.
00:1520 years ago, it was worth $11,000,
00:18and today, $63,000.
00:22Gold has been on a meteoric rise since 2024,
00:26and the price has hit record highs several times this year.
00:30But this modern-day gold rush
00:31isn't just pushing everyday people to buy gold bars.
00:35It's led to consequences in Africa's gold-rich nations.
00:40Foreign mining companies have moved in
00:42to extract the resource to meet the growing demand.
00:46They destroy the land.
00:47They turn the soil over.
00:49Nothing can grow there.
00:51So what exactly is making gold more expensive than ever,
00:55and how do the economic decisions of the U.S.
00:58affect communities 6,000 miles away?
01:03The relationship between humans and gold
01:06dates back thousands of years.
01:08The Lydians were the first to use gold
01:10as currency around 700 B.C.
01:14Over the following centuries,
01:16other civilizations adopted it too,
01:18cementing gold's reputation as a global symbol of wealth.
01:22In the U.S., gold mining captured the imagination
01:25during the gold rush of 1849,
01:28as people flocked to San Francisco
01:30in search of buried treasure.
01:32In 1900, the U.S. officially adopted the gold standard,
01:36a system that established a fixed price of gold in U.S. dollars.
01:40Although the U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1971,
01:44gold has always represented material value.
01:48It's been used for thousands of years as a transfer of wealth
01:53and a very widely respected way to move value
01:57from one place to another.
01:59Today, gold is often considered a safe haven asset.
02:03When markets get shaky, people often turn to it
02:06to keep their wealth safe.
02:08In normal years, gold only appreciates a regular
02:12small kind of percentage per year.
02:15But when things get kind of hairy,
02:17that's when you start to see real run-ups and spikes
02:19in the price of gold.
02:21Take the years following the 2008 financial crisis,
02:24for example.
02:26As the stock market was spiraling,
02:28gold prices jumped 13% in 2009,
02:3227% in 2010,
02:34and 33% in 2011.
02:37Gold prices dropped by about 45% when the economy recovered
02:41between 2011 and 2015.
02:44But COVID-19 sparked another economic downturn in 2020,
02:48causing prices to grow 25% and surpass $2,000 an ounce
02:53for the first time in history.
02:56More recently, on April 2, 2025,
02:58the day President Donald Trump announced his tariff plan,
03:02the markets reacted almost immediately.
03:05Apple's stock fell more than 7%,
03:08Tesla's by more than 6%,
03:10and Amazon's by more than 5%.
03:13But gold?
03:14It was trading higher on the commodities market.
03:18Even though the stock market has recovered since April,
03:20Goldman Sachs predicts gold will hit a record
03:23of $3,700 per ounce by the end of 2025,
03:28as people and central banks flock to it for security.
03:32Now it seems everyone wants to get their hands
03:35on a gold bar.
03:36And one retailer is helping meet the demand.
03:39Costco has been cashing in on the gold craze.
03:41They are selling out within hours.
03:43People are buying these up to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
03:48It's been a fascinating place to watch Costco sort of explore this market
03:53and has built a real niche community of collectors.
03:57Costco has been selling gold bars and coins to its members since 2023.
04:02If you want to own a little bit of gold,
04:05the best way to start is with a bar like this.
04:09Demand for them has become so high that in May 2025,
04:12the retailer started limiting its customers to one bar at a time.
04:17I came across an individual who said that they had paid for,
04:20they had bought some $30,000 worth of gold from Costco this year alone.
04:27Jewelers have also seen an increase in demand.
04:30Michael Lippman and his cousin Gary run this store in New Jersey.
04:33In recent months, they've seen 20% more people coming in trying to sell old jewelry.
04:39Nice to meet you. Please sit.
04:41Let's see what you got.
04:42Okay.
04:43Well, gold is so high now. It's such a great time to sell.
04:46I remember when it was $40 an ounce back in the day.
04:50You know what's great is people typically come in expecting to get,
04:55I don't know, a few hundred dollars.
04:57And now you can walk out with thousands of dollars.
05:00Wow. And it's really nice, especially if you need the money.
05:04So your price for this is $1,247.
05:07Wow.
05:09Isn't that nice?
05:10I didn't expect that.
05:12Because where was this in your house?
05:13This was in a drawer in the back of a sock drawer.
05:18There's also a rush to mine gold from electronic waste.
05:23So this gold bar that I'm holding in my hands is about 1.2, 1.3 kilos.
05:29And that's the amount of gold that this facility is recovering each day.
05:34When we published the story in early 2024, that bar was worth $85,000.
05:40More than a year later, it's worth about $135,000.
05:44Whenever a commodity like gold is in very high demand,
05:47that automatically starts to drive up interest in extraction of that commodity
05:53from the countries where it's produced.
05:56Countries like Liberia.
05:58An estimated 3 million ounces of gold lie deep beneath its lush forests.
06:04Mining dramatically increased here in 2008 because of the U.S. financial crisis.
06:10Liberia's gold production more than doubled that year.
06:14Now, foreign mining companies from places like Turkey, the U.K. and Canada are moving in to extract more.
06:23This means more competition for locals who'd been mining at a smaller scale.
06:28Alex Duru has been mining gold for nearly half of his life.
06:33I saw my brothers doing the mining at the time I was small.
06:38When I got mature, I gained the money.
06:41Alex mines both independently and for hire with mining companies.
06:46Today, he's working with a team of 29 other independent miners.
06:51They rely on basic tools.
06:54We don't have machines.
06:55We don't have holes.
06:56We dig our shovel.
06:58All those things we are passing through here.
07:00No working materials.
07:03With the tools they have, it takes a week to reach the layer of sediment that contains gold deposits.
07:08Some places carry eight feet.
07:11Some places carry nine feet hash.
07:13We got about four more days to get on the gravel.
07:16Then we can be able to wash.
07:18Alex and his team wash the sediment through a tool called a sluice box,
07:22which is lined with a carpet-like fabric that catches the gold.
07:26As water and sediment pass through, the heavier gold sinks into the carpet while lighter materials wash away.
07:33The carpet is receiving the gold.
07:36Then from there, we take our time to do the processing.
07:40Some miners illegally use chemicals like mercury during the washing process.
07:46The mercury acts like a magnet, binding the gold particles and making it easier to separate from the sediment.
07:52But the toxic chemical can seep into rivers and waterways,
07:56and cause skin and respiratory issues, neurological damage, and in some cases, death.
08:02So Alex and his team don't use it.
08:06What's left behind is the miner's small fortune of the day.
08:10Two grams of gold.
08:12Some of the gravel you wash, you get two grand.
08:15Some there you get 1.5.
08:17Some there you get three grand.
08:19This amount was worth about US$159 at the time of filming.
08:24But when foreign competition comes in, gold-rich communities often bear the burden.
08:30In November 2024, a Chinese-owned company, Hong Tu Mining, signed a five-year agreement with the community leaders in Boos Town to set up gold mining operations.
08:40George Brownell Jr. first spotted the site a month earlier while flying his drone over Matthouse, a small village two miles from Boos Town.
08:50When the drone pans to the right of the campsite, you start seeing the mark of the excavators.
08:56So I have some before shots of Matthouse prior to the mining.
09:02You see all the forest.
09:05This is what the body of water used to look like.
09:09You see people bathing.
09:11When he flew his drone over the area four months later, the landscape was unrecognizable.
09:17How fast the environment changed, it just took me by surprise.
09:22Because gold is highly dense, it settles near waterways once erosion breaks down gold-bearing rock.
09:29This means rivers, streams, and other bodies of water are most at risk from large-scale mining.
09:36Liberia's Environmental Protection Agency said Hong Tu violated the country's environmental protocols by diverting and polluting the local river.
09:45I've not physically seen people in that brown water bathing, washing clothes, and people actually attempting to boil the water to use it for cooking.
09:55Locals also accused the foreign-owned company of using heavy machinery like excavators near their farms, allegedly causing deforestation and soil erosion that made it more difficult to grow their food.
10:08Prior to this, you know, a lot of people were involved in agriculture.
10:11They were doing small-scale mining. Now, they don't have anywhere to get that dilly bread from.
10:17In March 2025, George and several Mat House residents sent a letter of complaint to Liberia's Ministry of Mines and Energy, asking for intervention to stop Hong Tu's operations.
10:30And what's their response?
10:32There was no response.
10:33Nothing?
10:34No response.
10:35They couldn't listen to us because we don't have the power. They say we don't get the power to stop them.
10:40You have no drink some of that water, like a quick water while people on our side drinking. You have no drink, it brings harm to you.
10:48All of them. All of them are in the convention. They are interested. They're not there for the silly things. They're there for their children and their wives.
10:56Nothing we can achieve on the people. One person just sitting down there enjoying the morning because I don't know.
11:06So George filmed and produced a short documentary and published it on Instagram.
11:11The company, the king, they say the king don't help us, but the king don't kill us.
11:18Before they work on our creek, they were going to give us safe drinking water. Yes, we agree.
11:29Since that time, the company refused to give us safe drinking water and they damaged all our drinking water.
11:34They using mercury on the water, the first-class mercury.
11:38There was a ton of people in the diaspora just sharing the video. People were outraged about it.
11:43After the documentary was posted, Liberia's EPA fined the company $40,000 and reportedly confiscated all of Hongtu's conjureband materials, effectively shutting down its operations.
11:58Hongtu was also required to hire an environmental firm to create a plan to restore Matt House to its pre-mining condition.
12:10Still, Hongtu's mining left a lasting scar on the community.
12:15They destroy the land. There is no way for us to make all our tini.
12:19Even to make kasawa fin, no way. They turn the soil ore. Nothing can grow there.
12:24I see it as a form of exploitation.
12:27And the community never really benefited from any of the mining that they did over here.
12:32Liberia isn't the only African country feeling the effects of gold mining.
12:37Reports have found that mercury and other toxins have polluted about 60% of Ghana's freshwater sources.
12:44In October 2024, hundreds of people in Ghana marched through the capital city protesting illicit mining.
12:51We should make sure that we are mining and then we are not spoiling our environment.
12:55We are not entering into our forest reserves and then we are not contaminating our water.
13:00Liberian officials say they are trying to prevent further damage from gold mining.
13:05While the locals in Matt House that we talked to worried that the government won't do enough to change things.
13:11Either way, the gold boom is sparking more illegal mining, making oversight more difficult.
13:18Most of the resources that have been identified as world-class mines or economically viable mines in Liberia are located in these really hard to reach areas, in these remote jungles.
13:33Geraldine Bass launched a mining company in 2019 after graduating from Pennsylvania State University in the U.S.
13:41It takes a lot of resources to get just one field agent to a remote area.
13:47In case of an emergency where the EPA has to really go and monitor something, it might take weeks for just one field agent to get out there.
13:55People are fully aware that when they come here, there is virtually no oversight.
14:01Liberia's EPA launched a five-year plan to improve environmental management and encourage sustainable mining.
14:08It includes setting up offices in all 15 counties of Liberia to oversee mining operations and address local environmental issues.
14:16The government of Liberia is trying their best, I would say. I've been working under two administrations now ever since I've been mining in Liberia.
14:25And they've been getting better. It's just very difficult.
14:31As Liberia struggles to regulate its mining industry, concerns are growing over how much gold remains to be mined.
14:40Geologists estimate that 50,000 tons of gold lie under Earth's crust.
14:47If global mining rates continue, scientists believe there could be no more gold left to mine by 2050.
14:55Its rarity will likely make gold even more expensive.
Be the first to comment