Meet the founder who moved beyond Latin America to pursue a $1.5 billion gold and silver opportunity in West Africa, now accounting for 60% of company’s production

When Jorge Ganoza co-founded Fortuna in 2004, the company was a small venture with little resemblance to the mining group it would eventually become.

At the time, Ganoza was entering a familiar industry. Mining had been part of his family’s life for four generations, giving him an early understanding of the business and the demands of working in a sector shaped by geology, capital and long development timelines.

He later trained as a geological engineer in Peru, building on that family background with his own technical expertise. But in 2004, Ganoza decided to step out of the family’s shadow and build a mining company from the ground up. Alongside two associates, Simon Ridgway and Mario Szotlender, he founded Fortuna.

The company started with just 34 people, limited financial resources and, as Ganoza puts it, “big aspirations.”

More than two decades later, those aspirations have taken Fortuna from a small Latin American mining company to a mid-tier gold and silver producer operating across two continents. The company expects to generate more than $1.5 billion in revenue this year and employs more than 5,000 people.

But one of the biggest changes in Fortuna’s story has happened outside Latin America.

In 2021, after 16 years focused primarily on Latin America, the company expanded into West Africa with a $1.5 billion acquisition. Since then, it has invested another roughly $700 million in the region, taking its total investment to over $2 billion.

Now, Ganoza is positioning West Africa as an increasingly important part of Fortuna’s future.

Today, Africa accounts for roughly 56% to 60% of the company’s gold production. Once its Diamba Sud project in Senegal enters production and the expansion of its Séguéla mine in Côte d’Ivoire is completed, Ganoza expects West Africa to account for close to 80% of Fortuna’s production.

For much of the past two decades, Jorge Ganoza had built Fortuna Mining around gold and silver in Latin America. Then, in 2015, he made his first trip to West Africa.

He had seen mining regions before, so it was not simply the presence of gold that caught his attention. It was what the region could become.

West Africa had some of the richest gold belts in the world. “The greenstone Birimian belt is one of the most productive gold belts in the world,” he told Business Insider Africa.

The belt stretches across parts of Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, and is home to some of the world’s biggest gold deposits, according to research by the University of Johannesburg.

But Ganoza was also looking beyond what was beneath the ground. If Fortuna was going to put its money there, it would have to understand the countries it was entering, build relationships with governments, manage a different kind of risk and, importantly, figure out how the communities around its mines could benefit from the industry too.

Ganoza was impressed by how governments approached the mining industry. He saw governments that viewed mining as more than simply an extractive business. They saw it as a way to drive broader economic development, creating space for governments and private companies to work toward the same goal.

For mining companies, that means bringing in the capital, technology and technical know-how needed to develop projects. For governments, it means using those mineral resources to support wider economic development. That alignment became an important part of how Fortuna viewed the opportunity in the region.

It also shaped how Ganoza thinks about risk. Fortuna deliberately operates in countries where the geopolitical risks can be higher than in established mining markets such as Canada, Australia or the United States. But for Ganoza, taking on more risk only makes sense if the potential return is worth it.

A project in a higher-risk country can still make sense if the economics are strong enough and the company can move from development to production relatively quickly.

“If I can develop a project with a 60% IRR in 12 to 18 months on the full permit cycle, I’m willing to deploy capital and take a bit more geopolitical risk in exchange for that,” he said.

For Ganoza, entering a new country is about more than finding gold. The first thing he looks at is the relationship with the government. “We need a partner when we go into a country,” he said.

Governments may change during the decades-long life of a mine, but mining companies ultimately do business with the state. Fortuna therefore wants to operate in countries where it believes that relationships can remain reliable over time.

The second is the opportunity to grow. Ganoza says Fortuna does not want an investment to be a one-off project. Each asset should provide a platform from which the company can expand its presence.

The third is the mineral endowment itself. The company wants to know whether there is enough geological potential to support further discoveries beyond the initial asset. That thinking helps explain Fortuna’s interest in Senegal.

When Fortuna acquired the Bambadji assets in Senegal, it was buying more than another mining project.

The company paid $200 million for the assets, but Ganoza says the bigger attraction was the chance to bring together a large and highly prospective land position in one of West Africa’s major gold belts.

Fortuna already knew the area well. Its Diamba Sud project sits nearby, and the company had a data-sharing agreement with Barrick that gave it a better understanding of the geology.

That proximity is important. Ganoza says the Bambadji property is just about 400 metres from Fortuna’s Diamba Sud camp. More importantly, the acquisition gives Fortuna control of roughly 60 kilometres of strike along a highly prospective geological corridor.

For a mid-tier gold producer like Fortuna, an opportunity like this can look very different from the way it would to a much larger mining company.

Diamba Sud is expected to produce an average of 158,000 ounces of gold annually during its first four years, before averaging 116,000 ounces over its estimated 9.4-year mine life.

Ganoza points to Barrick‘s decision to focus its investments elsewhere as part of the reason the opportunity became available. Fortuna, however, operates at a different scale and can therefore have a different view of what makes a project worth pursuing.

Ganoza believes the land package could hold between two and five million ounces of gold, with the potential for even larger discoveries as exploration continues.

That makes Bambadji a good fit for the strategy he has outlined. Fortuna is not just looking for individual projects. It wants assets that can give it a platform to keep growing.

Fortuna’s expansion into Africa is no longer just about spreading its operations across different geographies. It is becoming a big part of the company’s plans to grow production.

Over the next 18 to 24 months, Ganoza expects Fortuna’s annual gold production to increase by about 60%, from roughly 300,000 ounces to more than 500,000 ounces.

All of that growth is expected to come from West Africa. One part will come from the Diamba Sud project in Senegal, which Ganoza says is expected to start production this year. The other will come from the expansion of the Séguéla mine in Côte d’Ivoire, where Fortuna is increasing processing capacity by 30%.

But for Ganoza, the bigger story is not just the extra ounces. The projects should give Fortuna a stronger production base, with mines that have reserves capable of supporting roughly a decade of operations or close to it.

“We have the people, we have the projects, the gold,” he said. “So for us it’s just about focusing on execution over the next 18 months.”

For a company operating in developing mining jurisdictions, the question of who gets the jobs is as important as how much gold gets produced. Ganoza says Fortuna is fully committed to local employment, but argues that localisation has to be approached as a process rather than an immediate target.

Some countries simply do not yet have a sufficiently large pool of experienced mining professionals.

Senegal, for example, has not had a consistently expanding mining industry for decades. That means there are limitations in the availability of experienced engineers, contractors and specialised workers. Fortuna’s approach is therefore to train local workers while gradually reducing its reliance on foreign expertise.

In Senegal, Ganoza points to one achievement in particular. All of Fortuna’s geology and geoscience workforce is Senegalese.

The company is also working with equipment manufacturers and suppliers to train people from local communities to operate large mining trucks using simulators.

For Ganoza, this is about more than filling vacancies. Training workers for higher-paying technical positions can provide what he describes as social mobility, giving people skills that remain valuable beyond a single job or mine.

It is also commercially rational. Foreign workers cost more and often require accommodation and fly-in, fly-out arrangements. In the long term, Ganoza says, having a fully local workforce is in Fortuna’s interest. The challenge is determining how quickly that transition can happen.

The rise in gold prices has also changed the conversation between mining companies and governments. More African governments are also looking for ways to capture a larger share of the value generated from their mineral resources.

Countries including Zimbabwe, Malawi, Burkina Faso and Mali have restricted or banned exports of some raw minerals, pushing companies to process resources such as gold and lithium locally before exporting them.

Tanzania has also required large-scale gold miners, including Barrick Gold and AngloGold Ashanti, to allocate part of their production to local smelting, refining and trading through the Central Bank.

These moves reflect a broader effort across the continent to ensure that mineral wealth creates more value at home rather than leaving countries as exporters of largely unprocessed resources. But Ganoza says governments also have to consider how far they can push for higher revenues and greater local participation without making mining less attractive to investors.

Mining requires significant upfront capital, and projects often take years to develop and generate returns.

A higher tax or royalty burden may bring in more money for governments in the short term, but if it makes companies less willing to invest in exploration or expand existing mines, production could eventually suffer.

For Ganoza, that makes stability an important part of competitiveness. Countries with predictable fiscal rules, he argues, are better placed to keep attracting capital and support future production.

Last year, Fortuna reduced its exposure to Burkina Faso by selling its Yaramoko gold mine to a private local company for $130 million. The sale cut annual production by about 70,000 ounces, but Ganoza said the offer was attractive given the mine’s declining reserves and rising operating risks.

When Ganoza looks at Fortuna’s next few years, he sees a company that is significantly different from the one he helped start in 2004. The business that began with 34 people and limited capital now expects more than $1.5 billion in revenue and has more than 5,000 employees.

West Africa has changed too. What was once a new frontier for Fortuna is now becoming a major part of its future production.

Fortuna expects to invest another $800 million in West Africa over the next two years, on top of the roughly $2 billion already committed through acquisitions and subsequent investment.

For Ganoza, the immediate task is not finding another grand strategy. It is execution. The company has projects under development, an expanding production base and what he describes as more than $700 million in available liquidity.

And after more than 20 years of building Fortuna, his next challenge is to prove that the company’s biggest growth chapter may be unfolding thousands of kilometres from where it began. This time, in West Africa.