While communities mourn, the government’s gold buying initiative touted as a solution to smuggling has descended into secrecy. For four weeks, The Nation visited mining sites, interviewed miners, traditional leaders, dealers, civil society actors and reviewed official records. Requests for comment from the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM), the Ministry of Mining, the Malawi Environmental Protection Authority (Mepa) and Kasungu District Council have yielded no response. The presence of industrial-scale machinery contradicts the government’s claim that gold mining is artisanal and small-scale. The figure, he said, came from a recent survey by the Malawi Mining Company (Mamico), but has been suppressed “because it is embarrassingly revealing”.