Mali’s mining crisis: how Barrick Gold’s Loulo-Gounkoto payoff is hammering workers and the economy

A social truce built on backroom payoffs at Loulo-Gounkoto

The cancellation of the strike notice at the Loulo-Gounkoto gold complex hides a financial arrangement of a very different nature. Behind the public compromise on working conditions, the deal struck between Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold and union leaders rests on a deliberate purchase of social peace, marked by corruption at the top of the union hierarchy. The consequences for ordinary workers, local businesses and Mali’s economy are already becoming clear.

A facade compromise designed to calm the markets

At the end of September, Barrick Gold’s management announced the signing of a new collective agreement with worker representatives at Loulo-Gounkoto, one of West Africa’s most productive gold deposits. The fifteen demands put forward by the unions—covering overtime pay and reimbursement of mission expenses—served as an official smokescreen to call off the general strike planned for the end of the month.

On the ground, the signing reflects a betrayal of the rank-and-file’s interests by the senior union leadership, which sacrificed workers’ wage and safety demands in exchange for direct financial compensation. For the miners and their families, the immediate effect is a lost opportunity to improve precarious living and working conditions.

How Barrick Gold buys social peace

To crush dissent before it spreads and guarantee uninterrupted extraction, the Canadian group has applied well-tested methods of financially rewarding the union hierarchy:

• Hidden payments and direct bonuses: The clause on “reimbursement of mission expenses” acts as the formal channel for handing large financial envelopes and exorbitant appeasement payments to union negotiators—around 210 million CFA francs included in the deal.
• Use of subsidiaries and subcontractors: Entities orbiting the complex (Somilo SA, Gounkoto SA, Food & Events Africa) serve as accounting vehicles to execute these money transfers outside the Canadian parent company’s main books.

These rewards to union leaders directly conditioned the abandonment of major demands concerning real wage-scale increases and the formalization of precarious employees. The result for the workforce is a deepening of job insecurity and a widening gap between promises and reality.

A direct threat to the mining giant’s operations

This corruption pact at the top of mining unionism places Barrick Gold in an extremely vulnerable position amid Mali’s political context. The military junta in Bamako, which strictly enforces the 2023 Mining Code to maximize public revenue, now has a decisive lever against the multinational. The fallout for the national economy—already strained by reduced foreign investment and uncertain gold revenues—could be severe.

This system of backroom arrangements produces two immediate consequences:

• Exposure to state sanctions: The illicit financial flows used to neutralize the union provide the Malian government with the legal grounds to launch proceedings for corruption of social agents and to recalculate the financial penalties owed by the company.
• A rupture with the workers’ base: The diversion of the union struggle for the benefit of the leadership permanently discredits official representation. The breakdown of trust pushes miners directly toward wildcat strikes, rendering Barrick’s paid agreement totally ineffective.

The real cost for workers and Mali’s economy

By buying the silence of union leaders to maintain production rates, Barrick Gold has not resolved the social conflict at Loulo-Gounkoto: the company has locked itself into a spiral of corruption that permanently weakens its presence in Mali. For workers, the consequences are immediate: stagnant wages, unaddressed safety concerns and a shattered trust in their representatives. For local businesses and the wider economy, the uncertainty threatens supply chains, local spending and government revenues that depend on the mine’s stable operation.

The episode leaves a bitter aftertaste: a truce that protects production figures in the short term but undermines the very social and economic fabric that sustains the mine. Without genuine dialogue and accountability, the next explosion of discontent may be far harder to contain—and far more costly for Barrick Gold, its employees and Mali as a whole.

By Élise Ntamag — Regional policy