Works for me! The less gold mined, the more valuable my stash. ;)
Mali might have oil reserves - sits atop one of the last largely unexplored basins in the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoudeni_basin
But they have a thriving slave trade. Can’t they do well enough with that?
IIRC, Mali was the seat of a great medieval empire and they were mining gold back then.
How'd they "lose" the mines? Who stole away with them? They didn't LOSE anything; they used it all up.
Gold isn’t generally found by itself.. There’s lots of other stuff with it: copper, mercury, uranium, titanium, tungsten, etc. I would think the mine’s could convert their ore extraction process and continue to pull out other stuff!