Barkal Gold Associates is a highly experienced British gold trading firm focused on Africa and located in London, Grand Genève, Istanbul, and Khartoum/Port Sudan.
Our Trade Offering
Gold Dore Bars - Africa origin:

Our core experience is fostered from over a decade of painstakingly scouring the gold sector of  the largest and middle-ranking gold producing countries in Africa, focusing on marketing and facilitating of exports of gold dore bars globally.

​No other firm matches our reach and network of suppliers across the continent when it comes to procuring discounted gold dore bars competitively at both value and scale - with integrity, transparency, and reliabilty of service and  supply all guaranteed.

​Rest assured, too: gold dore bar offerings sourced in Africa by Barkal Gold Associates have been vetted painstakingly to ensure that they are supplied to buyers free from human rights abuses, ring-fenced from any local jurisdictional conflict zones, conform to international labour and environmental standards, and are free from any criminal, and terrorist or illegal activities.

​Barkal Gold Associates is THE trading company to have by your side for all your sourcing - or in person - gold dore bar buying needs across the African continent.

​We have reliable suppliers that operate with complete integrity, openess, and fairness, ranging from the Sahel countries, to western Africa, east and central Africa, and north-east Africa. And our services stand only to continue growing in importance to buyers be they hedging against inflation, rising geopolitical tensions, economic nationalism, populist movements, or simply buying gold dore bars as a store of value/wealth: as international mining companies will vouch, most easily accessible gold in other parts of the world (and South Africa) has been dug already, making Africa's rich and comparatively reachable gold endownment ever more important to the sector, going forward.

Our ancestral heritage makes all at Barkal Gold Associates radiate with pride in bringing to the world Africa's renowned gold, upon which ancient local kingdoms, including Kush/Nubia – central to the origin of our corporate name - flourished for centuries (see Our Name).
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​Our key goal at Barkal Gold Associates is simple: de-risking as close to zero the sale and purchase of African-origin gold dore bars at scale by global customers - both old and new. We provide the most reliable and professional gold sourcing and supply services available of Africa's renowned highly quality gold dore bars.

​They are delivered straight by a blue-chip security and logistics company (e.g. Brinks, Transguard) tarmac-side and onward by commercial airlines (usually Emirates or Turkish Airlines, owing to their extensive network on the continent) to the buyer's nominated refinery, which is invariably, though not exclusively, located in the United Arab Emirates.

​Thereafter, the gold dore bars are offloaded at the refinery for a final assay within the presence of representatives of both the buyer and seller parties, and a binding assay report is issued, as per the SPA signed by both parties, with the gold dore bars re-refined by the buyer at their designated refinery into five nines fine bars.

Barkal Gold Associates pre-screen carefully all our gold dore bar suppliers in Africa on the ground for integrity, security, and reliability. We also facilitate transactions strictly on a bank-to-bank basis, using MT799, DLC, and SBLC as a buyer's bank payment guarantee. (For sales from Sudan, a C L/C is the mandatory guarantee, as per central bank regulations.)

​Barkal Gold Associates also drafts the SPA with safeguards to disincentivise non-performance by the supplier party, ensuring the buyer can recover payment guarantee fees: a penalty, equal to two per cent of total transaction value, is payable by the seller, and processed on a bank-to-bank basis, should it fail  to supply the gold dore bars and/or the amount specified in the SPA, which, in turn, allows the buyer to recoup the cost of opening the (unused) payment guarantee.

​Barkal also makes sure that all SPAs state that no payment will be made by the buyer party until the final assay report has been issued. And all SPAs managed by Barkal Gold Associates also give buyers the right to dispute resolution under the International Chamber of Commerce Court of Arbitration, with English as the language of court proceedings.

So, it’s no surprise then that Barkal Gold Associates has managed sales of African gold dore bars from a variety of producers on the continent successfully to countless satisfied customers throughout the world for over a decade, including to, amongst other destinations, UAE, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and Thailand.


We provide buyers of African-origin gold dore bars with verifiable and factual documentation – and, crucially, meticulous representation throughout the whole gold sourcing and purchasing chain.


The gold dore bars stock that Barkal Gold Associates currently has to facilitate for trade ranges from small trial deliveries of 50kg up to several metric tons over a year contract period, with roll-ons available, too.

All our gold transactions are conducted with upmost professionalism, integrity, transparency, and in the most secure way possible. And we improve market efficiency by extending access to Africa's gold dore bars globally through deploying insurance, security, and risk-free logistics all the way to our buyer’s nominated refinery.

​Our business transparency strengthens the connections between our suppliers and clients ensuring water-tight performing transactions.

Our confidence in the integrity of our gold offering stems from being continuously on the ground throughout Africa (and our heritage born of its soil) getting our shoes dusty and muddy there and fostering local relationships with companies, people, communities and public officials alike in areas that most could never travel to.

No matter if your goal is to buy a comparatively small amount or tonnes of Africa's remarkably high purity gold dore bars, Barkal Gold Associates has the supply and sourcing services available to meet virtually any requirements.

​We only work with earnest and professional buyers and sellers of gold because we are extremely diligent about the comprehensive services that we provide.


The core management of Barkal Gold Associates has over a decade of experience working in Africa and gold and commodity trading. And honesty and integrity lie left-front-and centre of Barkal Gold Associates, led by its founder and managing director, Ahmed Badawi, a British-born, educated, and raised UK national of Sudanese heritage.

​He has an outstanding global professional record, encompassing the UK, USA, and, of course, Sudan. This notably includes serving as a spokesperson for Middle East & Africa operations at the headquarters of the World Bank Group in Washington, DC; a senior country risk analyst (Middle East and Africa) at the legendary US business risk mitigation consultancy, Dun & Bradstreet; and as a director for sovereign ratings (Middle East & North Africa) in London at one of the big three global rating agencies.
As well as working in London and Washington, Ahmed Badawi also provided strategic communications consultancy services for over a decade to the Government of Sudan, living in Sudan and providing highly valued strategic communications services at iconic junctures throughout Sudan’s history over the last two decades.
Indeed, he played an instrumental role in easing periodic tensions in bilateral relations between the USA and Sudan during the era of ex-President Omar al-Bashir, notably initiating outreach to and receiving in Khartoum then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, John Kerry, in his inaugural visit to Sudan at the height of the International Criminal Court indictment of Bashir in April 2009. ​Ahmed Badawi also played an instrumental role in helping the removal of US economic sanctions on Sudan under President Obama (see Our People – Managing Director).

​He hails from a family that is exceptionally well-known throughout Sudan – and indeed elsewhere on the African continent. His great grandfather – Babikir Bedri – was the pioneer of female education in Sudan and founded the first school for girls in the country in 1907, which, in turn, eventually became Ahfad University for Women - the first women’s university in Africa and the Middle East.

Ahmed’s father, meanwhile, devoted fifty years to the BBC World Service in London as an Arabic-language radio chief broadcaster and journalist in London at the BBC World Service, while his elder sister has achieved numerous international accolades as a veteran BBC television journalist, author, and filmaker in London.

​So, it’s safe to say that dealing with Barkal Gold & Associates means engaging with people and an entity of utmost repute and integrity; and we demand no less from our clients, too.

Ahmed Badawi currently resides between London, Grand Geneve, and Istanbul, with his French wife, Eva – a long serving humanitarian staffer with the United Nations. He continues to make on ground visits throughout Africa often.

​The skill set, professional work experience, and client management focus of Ahmed Badawi is complemented perfectly by Dr Amir Elsharif, CEO of Barkal Gold Associates. A trained doctor  and graduate of King's College, University of London, Dr. Amir Elsharif passed up a career in medicine and, instead, spent over a decade as a senior manager at the Italian energy giant, ENI, where he was responsible for HSE management across ENI's operations in the Gulf countries, where he has also resided.

​A qualified risk specialist, Dr Amir Elsharif has extensive global commodity trading expertise, including in the gold, hydrocarbons, sugar, and agricultural commodities sector. He hails from an exceptional mercantalist family background in Sudan, which has its roots in Morocco and Saudi Arabia.

​Dr Elsharif operates at the nexus of Barkal Gold's trading and operational strategy across Africa and, like Ahmed Badawi, visits Africa frequently to inventorise, reshape, and pre-screen its network of gold dore bar  suppliers in a number of jurisdictions across Africa.