Desert Gold Ventures CEO Jared Scharf on West Africa and its potential

I began working with Desert Gold in 2010.

We chose Africa and more specifically Western Mali because of the region’s incredible gold endowment. For example, our project in situated on a regional fault, The Senegal Mali Shear Zone. This regional feature is related to more than 35 million oz of gold and has 7 producing mines.

It took nearly 8 years to consolidate this land package. This is due to the fact that any ground on or proximal to the Senegal Mali Shear Zone is highly sought after and difficult to acquire.

The distinguishing feature of our project is its size and location. Our SMSZ project is the largest contiguous land package of any exploration company in the region at 400km2 and overlays a 38km portion of the prolific Senegal Mali Shear Zone. It is reasonable to target a deposit size of 5 million oz gold plus when you consider that we are roughly half between Sadiola at 10 million plus to the North and Gounkoto also at 10 million oz plus to the south both mines on strike with our SMSZ project.

As an exploration company, I believe we have one of the best team’s both at the corporate level in Canada and at the country level in Mali. Our lead technical director, Don Dudek, P.Geo, has nearly 15 years of experience in West Africa and his last two ventures, Avion Gold and Savory Gold were major successes and were both acquired in major public transactions by Endeavour Mining and Semafo respectively.

In country, our team of geologists have decades of experience working at major mines in the country such as the Yanfolila gold mine, now operated by Hummingbird, and the Loulo Gounkoto mine complex now owned by Barrick.

I myself have been working in Africa now for over a decade and have 15 years of operating and management experience.

Due to the large size and location of our project, every major producer in the region is keenly aware of what Desert Gold is doing. We have good relationships with all our neighbours and will continue to foster those relationships and build upon them.

There are over 20 known gold zones confirmed by drilling on our SMSZ project, all of which are open along strike and at depth. Most of the zones discovered to date demonstrate economic grades and some impressive widths. It’s also worth noting that many of these zones start at or near surface making the potential economics of a mine even better. In addition to this, there are literally hundreds of high value gold-in-soil anomalies on this property package that require follow up. I suspect that with every drill program moving forward will we likely discover new gold zones and expand on existing zones.

The next step, certainly, is to undertake much more drilling. We have a drill program underway as we speak that will be ongoing until the end of the dry season. During the off season, the rainy season, from August to October, we will update our 43-101 resource for the SMSZ project. This will likely be material as it will give some initial indication of the potential of this project.

Based on the regional gold endowment of the Senegal Mali Shear Zone and the size of our SMSZ Project and the significant gold presence already on our property, it is reasonable to target a 5 million oz gold deposit. This will require significant development and next work season will likely be our most important to date where we will target between 20,000 to 30,000 metres of drilling between Nov 2020 and July 2021.