Gold, Ghosts, and Guns: Tracing the Aftermath of Ethiopia’s Tigray War

In late 2022, Ethiopia’s Tigray region emerged from one of the deadliest wars of the 21st century. In the years since, survivors have struggled to rebuild and make sense of what they endured. At the same time, an economic crisis has taken hold, reshaping the region’s political economy around an illicit gold industry that may be worth billions.

The war left Tigray economically devastated. Factories remained shuttered, planting seasons were disrupted, and survivors and veterans alike struggled to feed their families. The federal government withheld funds that could have helped the region recover, and economic collapse laid the groundwork for what came next: the rise of murky gold-smuggling networks powered by shadowy foreign investors and local political and military interests.

Foreign capital has fueled the expansion of illegal mining enclaves and transnational smuggling networks—activities that enrich the global and local elites while ordinary Tigrayans bear the costs of labor exploitation and environmental ruin. Competition over these resources is also fueling a political crisis that now threatens to push the country, and the wider region, back to war.

This investigation—led by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in partnership with the Globe and Mail —offers a rare glimpse into the expansion of illegal mining in some of Tigray’s most remote corners, revealing how a global commodity boom is unfolding in a post-war periphery. It also investigates foreign enablers behind Tigray’s postwar gold rush and maps the rise of transnational smuggling economies. Over the course of this investigation, journalist Claire Wilmot also reconstructed previously undocumented civilian massacres and explored the war’s toll on Tigray’s cultural heritage for New Lines magazine. 

This project also seeks to document the aftermath of one of the century’s deadliest wars—to show how material and economic realities shape, and are shaped by, the region’s shifting political and cultural landscape.