This past Tuesday, the luxurious Sheraton Addis hotel was the venue for a rather unique event hosted by the Ministry of Mines & Petroleum (MoMP). The hotel was bustling with a motley crowd that seemed to have come in from all parts of the country to attend. Security guards could be seen patrolling here and there, signalling that some high-level government officials, including the Minister, Takele Uma, were to grace the occasion with their presence.

Officials as senior as Demeke Mekonne, deputy prime minister and minister of Foreign Affairs, were attending, sending a clear signal that the mining and export of gold is a lifeline to the country's depleted stock of foreign exchange reserve.

An unassuming attendant of the event was Mesfin Kayama. A tall and athletic young man from Derro Woreda in the Southern Regional State, his eyes radiated with excitement, for he, and several others, were there to receive awards and accolades from the Ministry. The federal government acknowledged their contributions in supplying gold to the central bank in what has been a record-breaking year for the Ethiopian mining industry.

The 29-year old artisanal miner, Mesfin, serves as a chairperson of a cooperative under Tibiber Gold Mining Association, which supplied over seven kilogrammes of the precious commodity to the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) over the past 10 months. Mesfin was posthaste in sharing what trials and tribulations he and members of his Association faced in getting the mineral out of the earth and into buyers' hands.

When federal authorities announced earlier this month that over six tonnes of gold were exported over the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, bringing in 513 million dollars in export revenues, there was little mention of the daily tribulations facing miners like Mesfin. Security threats, a high risk of accidents, a lack of equipment and infrastructure, and arduous labour are just some of the caveats attached to the gold industry.

One particular incident remains stored in Mesfin`s memory box, a day that he is unlikely to forget anytime soon.

It was almost sunset, and most miners were returning home, he recalled. He was with a friend holding two kilos of gold to be turned in the next day in Mizan Tepi when five guys pulled a gun and knives on them. They threatened Mesfin and his friend, robbed them, and left.

"I couldn't even breathe," he told Fortune. "I thought they were going to kill us." Mesfin`s and his friend's lives were spared but not the gold bars in their possession. They lost gold bars that would take their Association, which operates with 300 miners on one hectare of land, months to extract. It was worth over five million Birr at current international market price levels.

Mesfin and colleagues travel daily no shorter than 50Km from Selemunsheti town to the mining sites. Where there are 38 mining cooperative recognised by the authorities and working in the area, encounters with brigands are regular. Many toil, spending days digging tunnels dozens of metres deep to reach the gold deposits. It makes it hard to breathe, and the miners live in constant anxiety of tunnel collapse, a dreadful prospect made worse by the absence of health facilities anywhere near the mines.

Then job can be cruel. Not long ago, Mesfin and his colleagues buried 20 members in a day, following a tunnel collapse.

"It`s the most horrifying and saddening moment of my life," Mesfin told Fortune.

Nonetheless, his association mined part of the 207Kg gold produced from the Southern Regional State over the past 10 months, placing the region fifth among the regional states known for gold mining. The Oromia Regional State put out a whopping two tonnes to clinch first place, with Benishangul Gumuz following close behind. Surprisingly, the war-torn Tigray Regional State delivered just over 1,400Kg of gold over the same period, ranking third.

According to the Ministry, around a fifth of the country's total geographical area may contain significant gold deposits.

Yet, only a handful of industrial-scale gold mining projects operate in the country, with the majority of the mineral being extracted by artisanal miners like Mesfin, one of the 400,000 artisan gold miners believed to work in Ethiopia. They support an estimated five to seven million livelihoods, with their aggregate output accounting for less than one percent of Ethiopia's GDP, which grew by an average of nine percent a year over the last decade.

These are artisans responsible for more than half of Ethiopia's gold production. It has increased by more than threefold in the last decade, although the volume of gold they sell to the central bank has been going up and down, resulting in the fluctuation of export proceeds from the precious metal.

At 654 million dollars, Ethiopia's largest-ever earnings from the exports of gold were recorded a decade ago. Ever since, foreign exchange revenues from gold have been declining, reaching a historic low of 29 million dollars two years ago. The closure of big mining plants and a surge in contraband activities, with more than 61pc of gold produced by artisanal miners smuggled to neighbouring countries including Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, finally destined to reach the United Arab Emirates, were to blame for the decline, according to the Ethiopian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EEITI).

Alarmed, federal authorities paid attention. Research was committed, and a series of discussions with miners were held over the years. Establishing a command post, a move that is common whenever the country finds itself in a precarious security situation, licensing prospectors willing to pour their hard-earned money into the industry, and an adjustment on the purchasing price of gold by the central bank were amongst measures that were put in place.

Such attempts have been made at a time when the country's biggest mining plants, including MIDROC GOLD and Ezana, are not shipping their outputs to the international market. The most unexpected of the Ministry's announcements was that gold was sold for around 74 dollars a gram, significantly higher than the international market offers, which have hovered between 55 dollars and 66 dollars a gram over the past year. The price sat at just over 60 dollars a gram at the end of last week.