For AngloGold Ashanti, Africa is far more than a key geographic region within its global portfolio, it is the company’s birthplace and heritage, according to Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer Stewart Bailey.
Speaking at Africa Down Under, Mr Bailey said the AngloGold Ashanti story began more than a century ago in South Africa, and what the company had learned since was that its business was “nothing without partnership”.
“Over decades, we forged deep bonds in Africa, allowing us to find and build world-class mines and to responsibly unlock these generational gold ore bodies for the benefit of our shareholders, yes, but also for our host governments and our communities, without whom none of this is possible,” he said.
Mr Bailey pointed to an African proverb the company often invoked to describe its operating ethos: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
AngloGold Ashanti’s African assets include Obuasi and Iduapriem in Ghana; Geita in Tanzania; Siguiri in Guinea; Sukari in Egypt; and its stake in the Kibali gold mine in DRC. This portfolio forms the bedrock of the company’s global business, together accounting for just under 70 per cent of overall production and making AngloGold Ashanti the largest gold producer on the continent.
At Obuasi in Ghana, which holds more than 20 million ounces of resource, Mr Bailey described one of the most complex and significant ore bodies in the world, and a cornerstone of the company’s growth ambitions as it continues a patient, multi-year ramp-up to full production.
In parallel, AngloGold Ashanti is advancing low-risk, high-return growth projects and mine life extension opportunities at Geita, Iduapriem, Siguiri and Sukari, which the company expects will add 10–15 per cent to its current production base of around 3 million ounces over the next three years.
On Egypt specifically, Mr Bailey praised the company’s partnership with the Government of Egypt, the Mineral Resources and Mining Industries Authority and Minister Badawi, describing the country as “an extraordinary place to mine”.
“This is a place where you legitimately have a government and a regulator that listens to feedback from the broader industry and acts with frankly dazzling speed in terms of enacting reforms and creating best-in-class industry,” he said.
Mr Bailey said AngloGold Ashanti – now headquartered in Denver with a primary listing on the New York Stock Exchange and a secondary listing in Johannesburg (40% of daily volume trades) – had “gone adrift” toward the end of the last decade, prompting a new management team to set itself the task of safely regaining cost competitiveness and narrowing a stubborn valuation gap with major peers.
The company has since become one of the safest operators in the global gold industry, with a total recordable injury rate sitting well below half the ICMM member average, while holding costs flat in real terms over the past four years against a roughly 25% rise across its major peer group.
That performance has been underpinned by the company’s “Full Asset Potential Framework”, a site-owned optimisation program Mr Bailey described as “not rocket science,” built around harnessing the ideas of employees at every site toward clear, achievable objectives.
“It’s not a cost reduction program. It is an efficiency program. It’s a business improvement program, and it’s working,” he said.
The results have flowed to the balance sheet, with AngloGold Ashanti moving from around US$500 million in net debt at the end of 2024 to around US$1 billion in net cash today, even after paying record dividends and tax last year.
Local procurement spending rose by around 8 per cent to approximately $US5 billion last year, with more than 90% of procurement in Guinea and Tanzania sourced from local vendors.
Around 18 months ago, Mr Bailey said the company began applying its Full Asset Potential Framework to its social programs, deploying the same project management discipline used to drive operational efficiency toward community development.
“You’ll find across a lot of mining companies, your people who deal in your social and stakeholder engagement aren’t always the most effective project managers when it comes to realising their licence to operate ambitions,” he said.
“By deploying those project managers … we’ve seen that we can look at far more ambitious programs, longer-term programs and deploying more funds towards cementing licence to operate.”
The approach was pioneered in remote Guinea, where AngloGold Ashanti built a fully- functional school on site after identifying low adult literacy rates as a constraint on both community development and site productivity.
Once the site’s roughly 3,000-strong workforce has moved through the program, the school will be handed over to the community.
