About Rift Valley Minerals

Our Story

Rift Valley Minerals was founded to address a persistent problem in the African gold trade: legitimate producers and exporters have historically struggled to be taken seriously by the institutional buyers who dominate the global refined gold market. Informal supply chains, opaque paperwork, and a legacy of conflict-mineral concerns have made refiners cautious — and rightly so.

We set out to do things differently. Every kilogram of gold we handle is registered, licensed, documented, assayed, and shipped through accredited channels. Our supply chain begins at cooperatives of registered artisanal and small-scale miners in Uganda's Karamoja and Busia regions, and ends at the loading dock of an LBMA-accredited refinery or the vault of a professional bullion trader.

What We Do

Rift Valley Minerals buys refined and semi-refined gold from registered Ugandan producers and cooperatives, consolidates it at our secure facility in Kampala, arranges independent third-party assay, and exports it to international buyers under Ugandan export licence. We do not mine directly; we focus on what we do best — being a reliable, compliance-first export counterparty.

Our Principles

• Legality first. No gold leaves our facility without valid Uganda export documentation and buyer-side import authorisation.
• Provenance matters. We only source from licensed, documented mining cooperatives. We refuse undocumented material regardless of price.
• Independent verification. Purity and weight are confirmed by accredited third-party assayers, not by us.
• No off-book dealings. All payments clear through regulated banking channels. We do not handle cash, crypto, or informal settlements.
• Buyer protection. We align with the OECD Due Diligence Guidance so that our gold does not create compliance headaches for the refiners and banks who buy from us.

Our Market

We serve three classes of professional buyer:

• LBMA-accredited refiners — primarily in Switzerland, the UAE, South Africa, and India — for whom documented African doré is a standard input.
• DMCC-licensed bullion traders in Dubai, the largest legitimate hub for East African gold.
• Precious-metals desks at commodity trading houses and central-bank reserve programmes.

We do not sell to retail investors, unverified brokers, or counterparties that cannot complete our onboarding KYC.