Canadian gold miner Ashanti Gold, Australian miner Tietto Minerals and Canadian miner Nexus Gold have made seven new gold discoveries between them in Mali, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso.

Ashanti Gold has identified three zones with gold deposits at the Anumso gold project, in Ghana. Results from the 1 797 soil samples identified that the zones are along about 1 km of strike length and up to 240 m wide. The East and West Banket reefs show multiple lines of mineralisation, not just a single line of conglomerate as previously understood. A third zone, about 1500 m by 500 m was identified during further testing of the first two zones.

Ashanti has also identified a new gold zone in Mali, at the Kossanto East project. The new zone, parallel to and south-west of Gourbassi East, is about the same size as Gourbassi East, which is nearly 1 km.

Tietto Minerals, meanwhile, has identified visible gold logged in multiple diamond tails from deep extension drilling at its Abujar gold project, in Côte d’Ivoire. “Four deep diamond tails have intercepted visible gold from 2018 drilling, giving us effectively 1 000 m of strike length where visible gold has been logged in core (including two diamond tails from 2016 drilling). This suggests the high‐grade system at Abujar is lengthening and is open at depth,” Tietto MD Dr Caigen Wang maintains.

To date, more than 3 600 m of an initial 8 000 m reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling (DD) programme along an 11-km-long gold corridor at Abujar have been completed. Tietto plans on conducting RC and DD drilling of up to 40 000 m in 2018 to test more than 70 km of artisanal workings and significant gold geochemistry results.

Similarly, Nexus Gold has found gold on the Bouboulou exploration permit in Burkina Faso. The discovery is located nearly 600 m south west of the Rawema showing. Rock samples collected from the orpaillage returned drill intersections of 2.21 g/t gold over 35 m, including 5.46 g/t gold over 12 m and 4.62 g/t gold over 6 m. On the Niangouela permit, two areas were found to have gold. One area is south east of the company’s main shear discovery and the other 1 900 m west of the company’s main shear showing. Results from the sampling of the two areas have returned results ranging from 0.368 g/t of gold to 6.27 g/t of gold.

“The new zones we’ve uncovered and now sampled define greater areas of mineralisation at both concessions,” says Nexus Gold chairperson and COO Alex Klenman.

He adds that the new zone at Niangouela also advances the company’s understanding of the project and suggests that other zones of gold mineralisation are present.

Continued exploration interest in West Africa “made gold the top target, with the metal’s share of regional spending jumping to 61% from 51% in 2016”, according to S&P’s ‘Global World Exploration Trends’ report, published last month.

Further, a report by RFC Ambrian ‘West African Gold – Plenty To Play For’, published in January, stated: “Gold output is robust, with slowly declining average grades partly offset by improved recoveries.” The report also found that there are “a significant number of projects at the feasibility stage, and exploration expenditure increased in 2017”.