Milan (AsiaNews/Agencies) - After months of negotiations last week the Canadian mining company Allied Gold sold a minority stake in its assets to the Chinese firm Zijin Gold International. Through the deal, worth just under 300 million dollars, Zijin acquired approximately 9.2 per cent of Allied Gold’s shares. Zijin is a private company whose main shareholders include at least three Chinese state-owned enterprises.
The deal – as explained by the Middle East Eye website – represents the latest development in a saga that intertwines mining interests, investments from the United Arab Emirates and the war in Sudan, a conflict that has now been raging for three years, claiming tens of thousands of lives and displacing millions in what the UN describes as the most serious humanitarian catastrophe of our time.
The focus is primarily on the Kurmuk gold concession in western Ethiopia, in the Benishangul-Gumuz region, near the Sudanese border.
The Kurmuk gamble
Kurmuk is located just 20 kilometres from the Sudanese town of the same name, where mass graves attributed to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have recently been discovered. This Ethiopian border region is also characterised by informal mining activities and a recent history of conflict and displacement.
Allied Gold regards Kurmuk as a strategic project and plans to commence operations in the near future, aiming to produce between 240,000 and 270,000 ounces of gold as early as 2027, with an estimated value of around $1 billion.
The agreement with Zijin comes after a particularly eventful year. In 2025, Allied Gold had reached a deal worth approximately $500 million with the UAE-based company Ambrosia, which was set to acquire a 50 per cent stake in certain mining assets. However, the deal fell through. Subsequently, Zijin attempted to acquire the whole of Allied Gold for around $4 billion, but the takeover fell through as approval from the Chinese authorities was not obtained. The two companies therefore opted for a partial investment.
The deal now creates a joint, albeit indirect, presence of Chinese and Emirati capital in the Ethiopian mining sector. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, ADIA, has in the meantime become one of the main shareholders in Zijin Mining, the parent company of Zijin Gold International: by 2026, ADIA is said to have invested around $680 million in Zijin Mining.
The most controversial aspect concerns Kurmuk’s proximity to the Sudanese war. According to Middle East Eye, the nearby Ethiopian town of Asosa is a major logistics hub used by Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates to train and arm RSF fighters, who have been engaged in the war against the Sudanese army since 2023.
The UAE is also accused of being a major hub for the trade in gold from areas controlled by the RSF, which operates a dedicated company for this trade called Al-Junaid. Through this company, much of Sudan’s gold – produced mainly by artisanal miners – already finds its way onto the Dubai market.
The RSF’s Chinese weapons
China has always officially declared its neutrality in the Sudanese war, but Beijing is criticised for failing to prevent the transfer to the RSF of sophisticated Chinese-made weaponry, including howitzers, heavy machine guns and armed drones, via the United Arab Emirates. This is happening despite the UN’s continued renewal of the arms embargo on Sudan and the Sudanese government’s requests for Beijing to intervene to limit the flow of Chinese weapons into the country.
The fear, therefore, is that the significant expansion in gold mining at Kurmuk – managed by investors linked to China and the UAE – could have strategic implications for the Sudanese conflict, particularly if the new mining operations were to become integrated into the economic and logistical networks already associated with the RSF.
RED LANTERNS IS THE ASIANEWS NEWSLETTER DEDICATED TO CHINA. TO SUBSCRIBE, CLICK HERE.
