The Fekola deposit is located in the eastern portion of the Paleoproterozoic Kédougou–Kéniéba Inlier which covers eastern Senegal and western Mali. The deposit is considered to be an example of an orogenic style gold deposit. Orogenic gold deposits dominantly form in metamorphic rocks in the mid to shallow crust, at or above the brittle-ductile transition, in compressional settings that facilitate transfer of hot gold bearing fluids from deeper levels. During a geological event, the rapid rise of fluids takes these out of equilibrium with their surroundings, resulting in gold precipitation.

The Fekola deposit is hosted by a moderate to steeply west dipping, folded sequence of marine meta-sediments of the Kofi group, which locally include: argillite and minor pelitic sediments; fine grained turbidites, comprising laminated to thin-bedded siliciclastic siltstone and mudstone; and a heterolithic, mass flow breccia, or conglomerate. Fine grained thin marble units are present as a volumetrically minor rock type inter-bedded with the politic units. Minor mafic volcanic, or volcaniclastic units occur locally in the upper and possibly, lower portions of the hanging wall stratigraphy. Weakly feldspar-phyricfelsic dykes are locally observed. The deposit has been subjected to upper greenschist facies metamorphism.

The Mineralization is broadly continuous and has been traced over a strike extent of approximately 1.5 km, to depths of up to 400 m below surface, with widths to 300 m. The greatest continuity is observed within a high grade shoot (>2 g/t Au) which plunges approximately 13° to the north north west. Mineralization is open at depth, down plunge.

The majority of gold mineralisation in the Fekola deposit occurs in unweathered, fresh rock and is preferentially associated with stringers of pyrite parallel to the foliation and in fine disseminated pyrite. More specifically, the gold mineralisation is associated with fine grained pyrite in tan dolomite-albite altered wall rocks, which locally contain diffuse, often deformed pale grey quartzdolomite-pyrite-albite matrix veins and veinlets. Trace amounts of chalcopyrite have also been observed. The total sulphide content of the deposit is typically less than 5%.

The selected mining method for the Project is conventional open pit mining with all operations carried out by B2Gold. All values and results reported are on a 100% B2Gold ownership basis.

The open pit mine life is 9.5 years for the development of 320 m deep ultimate pit in a sequence of seven stages (cutbacks). The base case mine production schedule involves the movement of 32 Mtpa material to sustain processing of 4 Mtpa of high grade (~3 g/t gold) ore. The processing of the 14 Mt of stockpiled low grade (~1 g/t gold) ore is scheduled for processing towards the end of the mine life.

As upside potential B2Gold considers that part of the stockpiled low and medium grade ore can potentially be processed in the ROM feed at marginal cost, as the processing plant was designed for the 4 Mtpa nameplate capacity with a 25% (1 Mtpa) design factor.

The treatment plant design incorporates the following unit process operations:

• Single stage primary crushing with a gyratory crusher to produce a crushed product size of 80% passing (P80) of 150 mm.

• Crushed ore stockpile with a nominal 10,000 tonne live capacity to provide 20 hours of operation at design plant throughput. During extended periods of up to three days for primary crusher equipment maintenance, ore from the dead part of the stockpile is reclaimed by an excavator or dozer to feed the grinding circuit.

• Crushed ore from the stockpile is normally reclaimed by apron feeders positioned under the stockpile to feed the grinding circuit.

• The grinding circuit is a SABC type, which consists of an open circuit SAG mill, pebble crusher for SAG mill discharge oversize and a closed circuit ball mill to produce a P80 grind size of 75 µm.

• Quicklime from a silo is added onto the SAG mill feed conveyor along with the crushed pebbles. Sodium cyanide solution is added to the SAG mill feed chute to start the gold leaching process.

• Hydrocyclones are operated to achieve a cyclone overflow slurry density of 25% solids to promote better particle size separation efficiency. Subsequently, a leach thickener is included to increase slurry density to the leach circuit, minimise leach tank volume requirements, reduce overall reagent consumption, and separate gold dissolved by cyanide addition to the grinding circuit.

• Carbon columns (CIC) are included to recover gold already dissolved in the grinding circuit. The leach thickener overflow stream is pumped to this carbon adsorption circuit.

• Leach circuit with five tanks to achieve the required 24 hours of residence time at design plant throughput. Carbon-in-pulp (CIP) circuit consisting of six stages is a carbon adsorption circuit for recovery of remaining gold dissolved in the leaching circuit.

• Zadra elution circuit with gold recovery to doré. The circuit includes an acid wash column to remove inorganic foulants from the carbon with hydrochloric acid. The single elution circuit is common for both carbon adsorption circuits.

• Carbon regeneration kiln to remove organic foulants from the carbon with heat. This piece of equipment is common for both carbon adsorption circuits.

• Cyanide destruction circuit using SO2 and air to reduce the WAD Cyanide level in the tailings discharge stream to an environmentally acceptable level.

• Tailings thickener to increase slurry density for water recovery prior to tailings discharge to the tailings storage facility.