The first drill bit to test the Morila deposit belonged to the mining giant BHP, which sold the ground to Randgold Resources in 1996. A year later, Randgold's geologists found the main pit — the heart of the deposit. By 2000 a joint venture had formed between Randgold (later folded into Barrick) and AngloGold Ashanti, with the Malian state holding a share. Production began that October, and the numbers were staggering. In its early years Morila pulled gold from ore grading more than seven grams per tonne, a figure that made the mine extraordinarily profitable. Over its lifetime it would yield more than 7.5 million ounces and pay over 2.5 billion dollars to its stakeholders in dividends and taxes.

No gorilla stays strong forever. The richest ore comes first, and Morila's grades fell year over year — from over seven grams per tonne in the early 2000s to barely more than one by 2014. By 2009 the mine had shifted from digging fresh ore to treating stockpiles, and in 2013 it began reprocessing tailings, the leftover sludge of earlier milling. The plan was a quiet retirement: wind down operations and close the site around 2021. Mines, unlike the gold they chase, are not built to last. Morila had been a champion, but champions age, and the deposit that once earned a fierce nickname was settling into a long, managed twilight.

In November 2020 an Australian company named Firefinch bought Morila for just 27.67 million dollars from Barrick and AngloGold Ashanti, taking an 80 percent stake while the Malian government held the rest. Firefinch, an ASX-listed gold producer that also held a major lithium development project in Mali, drew up an ambitious 2021–2030 plan to mine tens of millions of tonnes and resume work at the main pit. Little of it came to pass. The mine faced mounting operational troubles and was effectively abandoned in 2022. When Firefinch tried to sell the struggling asset, the Malian government blocked the sale, insisting that ownership pass not to another foreign buyer but to a state-owned company. The gorilla had been left behind, its pit idle, its future uncertain.

At the end of June 2025, after months of negotiation, the Malian government announced it had acquired Morila outright — for a symbolic single dollar. The gesture was part of a broader push by Mali's authorities to reclaim gold mines abandoned by foreign companies and revive them under national control. It is no simple inheritance. Mali's mines ministry estimates roughly 2.5 million ounces of gold may still be minable, but financing and rehabilitating an aging, troubled site is daunting. There is also the matter of what lies in the rock itself: Morila's gold is bound up with sulphide minerals, dominated by arsenic-bearing arsenopyrite, a reminder that pulling treasure from the earth always leaves something behind. Whether the gorilla can be made to roar again is now Mali's question to answer.