Africa has spent generations exporting the resources that power the global economy. Tokenisation offers a chance to change how those resources are financed, owned and traded — but only if the technology is built on something more substantial than a digital promise.
By Amanda Clinton | Clinton Consultancy
There is something extraordinary about the journey of African gold.
It begins in the earth, often in places where the people living closest to the resource have the least access to the wealth it generates. It is extracted, weighed, assayed, refined, transported and sold. It may pass through several intermediaries before reaching a vault in London, Dubai, Zurich or another international financial centre, where it becomes part of a reserve, an investment portfolio or a financial institution’s balance sheet.
By then, the gold may have acquired something beyond its physical value. It has acquired the confidence of institutions, the documentation of a recognised supply chain and access to markets where investors can trade, borrow against or hold it as part of a wider financial strategy.
The question worth asking is why African countries that produce so much of the world’s valuable commodities should not also play a greater role in the financial systems built around them.
This is where tokenisation enters the conversation.
At its simplest, tokenisation is the process of representing rights to an asset through a digital token recorded on a blockchain or another digital ledger. That asset might be a bar of gold held in a secure vault, a quantity of another commodity, a bond, a property interest or a claim on future cash flows.
The promise is appealing. If a physical asset can be represented digitally, ownership might be divided into smaller units, transactions could become easier to record and transfer, and investors who would otherwise struggle to access certain markets might gain new opportunities.
Gold that was once accessible primarily through physical dealers, specialised accounts or institutional investment products could, in principle, be represented in smaller digital units. A business holding eligible commodity assets might be able to use properly structured digital instruments to attract financing. A lender might be able to verify collateral more efficiently. An investor might gain exposure to an asset without having to arrange its physical transport or storage personally.
But the technology does not eliminate the difficult questions. It makes answering them more important.
Does the gold actually exist? Who owns it? Who holds it? Is it already pledged to another lender? Can the token holder enforce a legal claim to the underlying asset? And if the company issuing the token collapses, does the investor own identifiable gold or merely an unsecured promise from a business that may no longer be able to pay?
These are not peripheral details. They determine whether tokenisation becomes a useful financial instrument or an elegant digital representation of an uncertain claim.
For Africa, the opportunity is not simply to put gold on a blockchain. It is to build the legal, commercial and institutional infrastructure that allows African assets to command confidence, attract investment and support more sophisticated forms of financing.
That is a much bigger ambition.
Africa’s resource wealth and the missing financial connection
Africa’s mineral wealth is well documented. Yet the relationship between producing a valuable commodity and capturing the wider financial benefits associated with it is far from straightforward.
Mining creates economic activity, employment, exports and government revenue. But the financing, insurance, refining, trading, custody and investment structures surrounding commodities can generate additional value, often in financial centres far removed from the places where those commodities originate.
The problem is not that African gold is inherently less valuable. Nor is it that international markets should be expected to trust an asset simply because it comes from the continent.
The problem is that value depends on more than the resource itself.
An investor assessing a commodity-backed instrument needs to know that the asset exists, that its quality is established, that its ownership is clear, that it can be sold or redeemed and that the legal rights attached to the investment will be respected.
Where those conditions are uncertain, financing becomes more expensive or unavailable. Where they are demonstrably reliable, a wider range of investors may be willing to participate.
This is the institutional challenge behind tokenisation.
A digital platform can make an asset easier to represent and transfer. It cannot independently establish that the asset was lawfully mined, that its declared weight is accurate, that its purity has been verified or that the seller has a legitimate right to dispose of it.
Those questions still depend on people, institutions, physical inspections, records, legal agreements and enforceable rules.
The technology is useful precisely when it connects these elements into a more reliable system.
For a continent seeking greater value from its natural resources, that distinction matters. The objective should not be to digitise existing weaknesses. It should be to use digital infrastructure to reduce them.
What tokenising gold actually means
Imagine a bar of gold that has been independently assayed, assigned a unique identification record and placed in a secure vault.
A properly structured tokenisation arrangement might create digital tokens representing defined ownership interests in that gold. The tokens could be transferred between eligible investors, subject to the relevant legal and regulatory requirements.
Instead of having to purchase an entire bar, an investor might acquire a smaller fractional interest. The issuer or an authorised intermediary could maintain records connecting the tokens in circulation to the underlying metal, while an independent custodian and auditor provide assurance about the reserves.
In theory, this could make gold investment more accessible, simplify some administrative processes and support more flexible trading.
There are, however, several different products that are often grouped together under the label tokenised gold.
One product may give the holder a direct, legally enforceable ownership interest in specified bullion. Another may represent a contractual claim against an issuer that promises to maintain gold reserves. A third may provide price exposure to gold without giving the investor any right to receive the metal itself.
These arrangements are not interchangeable.
If an investor buys a token believing that they own a fraction of a particular gold bar, but the legal documentation gives them only a claim against the issuer, the difference could become critical during insolvency.
Likewise, a token may be backed by physical gold without offering practical redemption. Minimum redemption quantities, storage charges, delivery restrictions and geographic limitations can all affect what the investment is worth to its holder.
The word backed should therefore prompt further questions rather than end the conversation.
Backed by what, held where, verified by whom and enforceable under which law?
Those are the questions that separate a credible commodity-backed instrument from a marketing proposition.
Ghana: an opportunity to build the infrastructure around the gold
Ghana is an especially important country in which to examine this possibility because gold occupies a central place in its export economy and its broader financial ambitions.
In September 2025, the Ghana Gold Board, commonly known as GoldBod, announced discussions with the Ghana Commodity Exchange about developing gold trading and exploring investment models that included tokenisation and exchange-traded funds.
The direction of travel became more concrete in 2026, when Ghana’s Securities and Exchange Commission and GoldBod began working on innovative gold-backed financial products, including a proposed tokenisation pilot within the country’s developing digital-asset regulatory framework.
The reported model envisages GoldBod playing a central role in the verification, custody and oversight of the physical gold underpinning the instruments, with regulatory supervision intended to inform the development of appropriate safeguards.
These initiatives are significant because they place tokenisation within an existing conversation about commodity markets, formalisation and domestic capital-market development, rather than treating it as a separate technological experiment.
Sources: GoldBod’s announcement on gold trading and tokenisation and Ghana’s reported gold-backed securities and tokenisation initiative.
The potential benefits are worth examining carefully.
A credible gold-backed investment product could create additional ways for domestic investors to gain exposure to gold. It might help connect verified commodity holdings to the capital market, where investment products can be structured, distributed and traded under defined rules.
If designed appropriately, such instruments could also encourage more formal documentation of gold holdings and improve the connection between physical commodity markets and financial services.
But Ghana should not measure success simply by whether it launches a gold token.
It should ask whether the resulting market is more transparent, whether the underlying gold can be independently verified, whether investors have enforceable rights and whether the arrangement creates genuine economic value beyond the technology itself.
There is a distinction between making gold digitally accessible and making gold financially productive.
The first concerns how an investor acquires and transfers exposure to the asset. The second concerns whether the instrument helps finance businesses, support trade, broaden investment opportunities or improve the terms on which capital reaches productive activity.
Ghana’s opportunity lies in the second.
The country has a chance to develop a system in which the quality of its commodity infrastructure becomes a competitive advantage: reliable assaying, credible custody, traceable supply chains, transparent reporting and clear rules governing the financial instruments built around physical gold.
If those elements are developed together, tokenisation could become one component of a more sophisticated gold market.
If they are not, the digital layer may add complexity without delivering much additional value.
The gold must exist before the token can mean anything
Of all the issues surrounding tokenisation, verification is arguably the most important.
A blockchain can record that a token was created, transferred or cancelled. It can provide a shared record of transactions and make certain changes easier to audit. But it cannot, by itself, inspect a gold bar or establish whether a physical shipment contains the commodity described in its documentation.
This is sometimes called the connection between the digital and physical worlds — and it is where many of the hardest problems reside.
Suppose a company claims to have issued 100,000 tokens, each representing a defined quantity of gold. The ledger may show precisely how many tokens exist. That is useful information.
But the critical question remains: is there enough eligible gold in custody to support all the claims represented by those tokens?
The answer requires evidence beyond the ledger.
The issuer needs reliable records of the underlying metal. Custodians must maintain appropriate controls over the physical asset. Independent auditors should verify reserves and reconcile them with tokens in circulation. Legal documentation must establish what the token holders actually own and what happens if the issuer, custodian or another intermediary fails.
The World Gold Council has highlighted challenges around custody, audit standards, redemption and the legal treatment of tokenised gold. The London Bullion Market Association has likewise emphasised the importance of authenticity, provenance, custody and independent verification when precious metals are represented digitally.
Sources: World Gold Council research on digital gold and LBMA analysis of precious-metals tokenisation.
For African commodity markets, this challenge extends beyond gold bars already held in established vaults.
It begins at the source.
Where did the gold come from? Was it produced under the applicable mining licence? Was it lawfully purchased? Can its journey through aggregators, traders, refiners and exporters be documented? Were the relevant environmental, labour and anti-money-laundering requirements observed?
These questions have economic consequences. International buyers, lenders and institutional investors increasingly need credible information about the origin and handling of the commodities they acquire.
A token cannot transform an undocumented supply chain into a trustworthy one merely by placing its records on a digital ledger.
The underlying information must be accurate, and someone must be accountable for verifying it.
This is why the development of gold traceability systems matters alongside tokenisation. In January 2026, GoldBod announced plans for a traceability programme initially engaging approximately 600 artisanal and small-scale mining operations. The programme was intended to support more responsible and sustainable sourcing within Ghana’s formal gold supply chain.
Source: GoldBod’s gold-traceability announcement.
Traceability and tokenisation are different activities, but they can reinforce one another. Traceability helps establish the provenance of the physical commodity. Tokenisation can represent defined rights associated with that commodity once the relevant facts and legal arrangements have been established.
Neither substitutes for the other.
The opportunity is to connect them into a system that makes African commodities easier to verify, finance and trade responsibly.
From gold ownership to trade finance
The more transformative possibility may lie not in selling gold tokens to individual investors, but in using verified assets to support the financing of real economic activity.
Trade finance is essential to international commerce. Importers and exporters often need funding at different stages of a transaction: to purchase goods, pay suppliers, cover transport and insurance, hold inventory or bridge the period between shipping a product and receiving payment.
Yet access to trade finance can be difficult, particularly for smaller businesses without extensive banking relationships, established credit histories or sufficient conventional collateral.
A commodity-backed financing arrangement can sometimes help bridge this gap.
Consider a business that holds a quantity of eligible gold under a legally recognised custody arrangement. If the gold’s ownership, quality and value can be established, a lender may be willing to consider it as collateral for a loan.
Tokenisation could potentially make certain administrative aspects of that arrangement more efficient. Digital records may help track ownership interests, record transfers and connect participants to a common record of the asset.
With appropriate legal structures, a lender might also be able to monitor the status of collateral more efficiently or participate in a financing arrangement involving several eligible investors.
But the underlying lending decision would still depend on familiar questions.
How reliable is the valuation? Can the lender enforce its security interest? Is the collateral already pledged elsewhere? Can it be sold promptly if the borrower defaults? What happens if the token platform becomes unavailable? Does the legal arrangement recognise the lender’s rights over the physical commodity?
A digital token does not automatically make collateral acceptable to a bank. Nor does it remove the need to assess the borrower, the transaction, the market value of the asset and the risks of enforcement.
What it may do is reduce some of the friction involved in documenting and administering an otherwise sound financing structure.
That distinction is important because Africa does not need more complicated financial products for their own sake. It needs financial products that solve identifiable problems.
If tokenisation can help a lender establish reliable control over collateral, reduce reconciliation costs or make eligible assets more accessible to financing, it may contribute to better commercial outcomes.
If it merely creates another intermediary between a borrower and a lender, the benefits may be limited.
The test should always be whether the financing becomes more reliable, more accessible or more efficient — and whether the improvement is large enough to justify the costs and risks introduced by the new system.
The institutional investor is not buying the technology
Much of the public conversation about tokenisation focuses on accessibility: the possibility that someone who cannot afford an entire gold bar might buy a fraction of one.
That is a legitimate benefit. But institutional investors approach the opportunity from a different starting point.
A pension fund, bank, insurer or asset manager will want to know whether the investment fits within its mandate, whether the asset is legally enforceable, whether the custodian is credible, whether valuation and reporting are reliable and whether the position can be liquidated when necessary.
The investor may also need to understand the regulatory treatment of the instrument, its tax implications, the rights attached to the token and the risks associated with the platform through which it is issued or traded.
These are not questions that can be answered by pointing to a blockchain explorer.
An institutional investor needs a complete legal and operational framework. The digital record is one component of that framework, not a replacement for it.
This is particularly important when an African commodity is sourced in one jurisdiction, refined in another, held in a third and represented by a token issued under a fourth jurisdiction’s laws.
Which law governs the investor’s rights? Which court or dispute-resolution mechanism can provide a remedy? What happens if the issuer is insolvent while the gold remains in a foreign vault? Can a court recognise the investor’s claim to the physical asset? Does the custodian acknowledge the arrangement, and can the investor’s rights be enforced independently of the issuer?
These questions become more important, not less, as digital assets cross borders more easily.
Institutional investment depends on confidence that the legal structure will remain meaningful when circumstances become difficult.
That is why the development of tokenised commodity markets requires collaboration among regulators, commodity authorities, custodians, auditors, financial institutions and legal practitioners. Technology companies can build the platform, but they cannot independently supply every institutional guarantee that investors require.
For African markets seeking to attract serious international capital, this is a strategic consideration.
The competitive advantage may not belong to the country that announces tokenisation first. It may belong to the country that can demonstrate, consistently and transparently, that the assets represented by its financial instruments are real, properly documented and supported by enforceable rights.
Fractional ownership is not the same as financial inclusion
One of the most attractive claims made about tokenisation is that it can democratise investment.
There is substance to the argument. If an investment can be divided into smaller units, the minimum amount required to participate may fall. Digital distribution can make it easier for eligible investors to access products without travelling to a specialist dealer or arranging the storage of physical commodities themselves.
But accessibility is only one part of inclusion.
An investor who can purchase a small quantity of tokenised gold may still face high transaction costs, limited opportunities to sell, uncertain redemption rights or a platform that is difficult to understand.
A product may be available through a mobile application without being affordable or appropriate for the people it claims to serve.
Financial inclusion must therefore be assessed in practical terms. What does it cost to buy and sell the token? How easily can the investor withdraw the proceeds? What happens if the platform fails? Are the risks explained in language ordinary people can understand? Is the product suitable for the investor’s circumstances?
There is also a question of distribution.
If tokenisation attracts new investment into gold, who benefits from the resulting market? Does the value flow primarily to platform operators, custodians and foreign intermediaries, or can local businesses and financial institutions participate meaningfully in the new infrastructure?
The answer will depend on how the market is designed.
A credible system could create opportunities for local technology companies, auditors, custodians, legal advisers, refiners and financial institutions. It could also provide new investment channels for individuals and businesses, subject to appropriate safeguards.
But those benefits will not arise automatically.
They require deliberate attention to competition, local expertise, market access, consumer protection and the allocation of economic value across the supply chain.
The objective should not be to place a sophisticated financial product on a mobile phone and declare the problem solved. It should be to ensure that people who participate understand what they own, what it costs and what rights they can enforce.
The danger of mistaking a digital market for a physical one
Tokenised gold introduces another complication: the digital market may operate differently from the market for the underlying physical commodity.
Digital platforms may permit transfers at any hour, while the physical gold market, custodial operations, banking systems and redemption arrangements operate within different schedules and constraints.
A token might therefore be available to trade when the relevant underlying market is closed or when the practical mechanisms for redemption are unavailable.
This can create differences between the token’s market price and the value of the gold it is intended to represent.
Liquidity is another concern. A token may be technically transferable without having a willing buyer at a reasonable price. The existence of a trading platform does not guarantee sufficient market depth, particularly during periods of stress.
Investors also need to consider the costs that can accumulate across the transaction: platform charges, price spreads, custody fees, currency conversion, network fees and redemption expenses.
For small investors, these costs can materially reduce the benefit of fractional ownership.
Then there is the risk associated with the technology itself. Smart-contract errors, cyberattacks, lost private keys and platform outages can interrupt access to assets or expose users to losses. Administrative controls may also permit an issuer or authorised operator to freeze or restrict transfers under specified circumstances.
These risks do not make tokenisation inherently unsuitable. They demonstrate why the quality of the underlying financial arrangement matters more than the novelty of the technology.
The investor should understand both the commodity risk and the additional risks introduced by the digital structure.
Gold prices can fall. An issuer can fail. A custodian can make mistakes. A platform can become inaccessible. These are different risks, and no single promise of physical backing eliminates them all.
Regulation must follow the asset, not the excitement
The regulatory task is unusually demanding because tokenisation brings together activities that may traditionally have been supervised under different legal frameworks.
Depending on the product, the arrangement may involve securities regulation, virtual-asset rules, commodity trading, custody, payments, consumer protection, anti-money-laundering obligations and cross-border exchange controls.
A token representing a legally enforceable investment interest in gold may require different treatment from a token used solely to record a commercial claim or a digital instrument that provides price exposure without ownership of the metal.
Regulators must understand what the instrument actually represents before deciding which rules should apply.
For Ghana, the developing framework around virtual assets and the reported collaboration between the Securities and Exchange Commission and GoldBod provide an opportunity to test how these questions should be addressed in practice.
A well-designed framework should establish clear standards for the verification of underlying assets, independent custody, reserve reconciliation, disclosure, redemption and the treatment of investor claims during insolvency.
It should also clarify the responsibilities of the issuer, custodian, platform operator and any intermediary involved in distributing the instrument.
Where a product is intended for institutional investors, the framework should support reliable reporting, independent assurance and enforceable contractual rights. Where retail investors are involved, disclosures and complaints mechanisms must be understandable and accessible.
Cross-border arrangements deserve particular attention. A digital token can move between jurisdictions, but legal rights do not necessarily travel with the same simplicity. A token that is recognised in one country may encounter different requirements elsewhere, and a foreign custodian may be subject to legal obligations that affect the rights of local investors.
Regulation should not assume that a product is safe simply because it is technically sophisticated or linked to a valuable commodity.
Nor should it prohibit useful innovation without examining whether risks can be addressed through proportionate safeguards.
The objective is to create a framework in which credible businesses can operate, investors can understand their rights and regulators can intervene when necessary.
Beyond gold: the wider potential of African commodities
Gold provides a natural starting point for tokenisation because it is internationally recognised, widely traded and already supported by established systems of assaying, refining and custody.
But the broader concept of representing real-world assets digitally extends to other commodities and financial instruments.
Depending on the legal, commercial and operational arrangements, tokenisation could potentially support financing structures linked to eligible agricultural commodities, metals, warehouse receipts, inventories or other assets with verifiable ownership and market value.
Consider an agricultural trader holding a documented quantity of a commodity in an approved warehouse. If the goods have been independently verified, the warehouse receipt is legally recognised and the lender can establish a valid security interest, the inventory may provide a basis for financing.
Digital records could help connect the warehouse, trader, lender and other authorised parties, reducing some of the administrative friction associated with documenting and monitoring the collateral.
The same principle may apply to certain mineral inventories or other commodities, provided their characteristics, ownership and legal treatment are suitable for the arrangement.
But each asset class presents different challenges.
Agricultural commodities can deteriorate, require specific storage conditions or fluctuate in quality. Some minerals require extensive verification and processing before their value can be reliably established. Certain assets are difficult to liquidate quickly, while others may be subject to export restrictions or complex ownership arrangements.
A system designed for gold cannot simply be copied across every commodity.
The underlying asset must be suitable for the intended financial product, and the legal and operational framework must reflect its particular risks.
The wider opportunity lies in developing reusable infrastructure: trusted identity and ownership records, reliable verification processes, recognised custody arrangements, transparent reporting and clear rules for transferring or enforcing claims over assets.
Such infrastructure could support more than one product. It could help create a more efficient connection between African commodity markets and domestic and international sources of capital.
That is where the long-term value may lie — not in the number of tokens issued, but in the quality of the markets built around them.
The question of who captures the value
There is a final issue that deserves more attention in discussions about tokenisation in Africa.
Suppose a Ghanaian commodity is verified, tokenised and sold to investors around the world. The transaction may be efficient. The investor may gain convenient access to the asset. The platform may generate revenue, and the custodian may earn fees.
But what has changed for the country and the communities from which the commodity originated?
The answer depends on the structure of the transaction.
Tokenisation does not automatically increase the price received by a producer, improve working conditions, formalise an informal supply chain or ensure that more value remains in the local economy.
Those outcomes depend on the commercial arrangements, the quality of regulation and the broader institutions surrounding the commodity.
A successful tokenisation market could create opportunities for African firms to provide verification, custody, technology, legal services and investment management. It could help domestic capital markets develop products linked to locally produced assets. It could potentially improve the availability of financing for eligible businesses.
But it could also create a new layer of intermediaries whose revenues flow elsewhere, while African producers continue to capture only a limited share of the wider value chain.
The technology does not decide which outcome prevails. Policy and commercial design do.
For governments, that means asking how domestic expertise can be developed, how local financial institutions can participate and how commodity markets can be connected to productive investment.
For businesses, it means examining whether a tokenisation structure improves the underlying economics of a transaction rather than merely making it more fashionable.
For investors, it means understanding not only the asset being purchased but also the commercial arrangements through which value is created and distributed.
The ambition should be to build markets that are internationally credible and locally useful.
A more ambitious way to think about African gold
Africa does not need to prove that its commodities can be represented digitally. The technology already makes that possible.
The more important task is to establish the conditions under which those digital representations can become trustworthy financial instruments.
That requires verified assets, credible custody, clear ownership rights, independent oversight, appropriate regulation and markets with sufficient liquidity to serve their intended purpose.
It also requires a realistic understanding of what tokenisation can and cannot achieve. It cannot repair a weak legal system on its own. It cannot make an unreliable supply chain trustworthy merely by recording its transactions. It cannot guarantee financing simply because collateral has been digitised.
But where the underlying institutions are strong enough, tokenisation may help reduce friction, broaden access to investment and create new ways of connecting physical assets with capital.
Ghana’s developing work on gold-backed financial products offers a useful opportunity to test these possibilities. The outcome should be judged not by the language of technological transformation, but by whether the arrangements create verifiable ownership, meaningful investor protection and tangible economic benefits.
The broader African opportunity is to build the infrastructure that allows commodities to move more confidently between the physical economy and the financial system.
That is an ambition worth pursuing carefully.
For too long, conversations about African resource wealth have concentrated on what lies beneath the ground and how much can be extracted. The next conversation should also concern the institutions, markets and financial capabilities that determine what happens after extraction.
Gold will remain physical. Its value will continue to depend on quality, scarcity, demand and confidence. But the ways in which ownership is recorded, capital is raised and financial claims are transferred may evolve considerably.
If African countries build the right foundations, tokenisation could become part of that evolution — not as a shortcut to wealth, but as a tool for making existing wealth more accessible to investment and more useful to the economies that produce it.
The real prize is not a digital gold rush.
It is a future in which African commodities are supported by African expertise, verified through credible institutions, connected to deeper pools of capital and traded through markets in which ownership and accountability are as clear as the technology promises to make them.
The question is not whether Africa can put its gold on a blockchain. It is whether Africa can use that technology to build stronger markets around the gold it already has.
Amanda Akuokor Clinton, Esq. is the Founding Partner of Clinton Consultancy, a UK-trained lawyer called to the Bar of England and Wales and the Ghana Bar. She holds an MSc in African Politics from SOAS, University of London, and brings experience spanning litigation, corporate and commercial law, cross-border transactions, regulatory advisory and investment-related matters.
Her writing explores the relationship between law, capital, governance and Africa’s economic transformation, with particular attention to the institutions and legal frameworks that shape investment, financial innovation and the development of African markets.
Through her work, Amanda examines how African countries can engage with emerging global technologies and investment opportunities while strengthening local institutions, protecting economic interests and creating more sustainable pathways to growth.
Website: www.clintonconsultancy.com
