Welcome, everyone. I'm pleased to have this opportunity to chair today's annual general and special meeting. Before I start, I'd like to thank the B2Gold former chair, Bob Cross, who I believe is here today. Bob, I'd like to acknowledge the smooth transition you provided as I came in as chair and the very strong platform you provided. In addition, I'd like to acknowledge and thank George Johnson for his long service with the B2Gold and its shareholders. Mr. Johnson is retiring this year and not standing for reelection. And George, we wish you all the very best in a well-deserved retirement. Maybe a round of applause for George. I'd now like to call to order the 2023 annual general and special meeting of the shareholders of B2Gold.
We're also hosting the meeting through a virtual platform accessible to all of our shareholders who have followed the procedures described in the information circular to participate, submit questions, and vote regardless of physical location. Before we begin, we'd like to respectfully acknowledge that we're gathered today on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nation. I'll act as chair of the meeting, and I appoint Randall Chatwin, Senior Vice President, Legal and Corporate Communications of the Company, to act as Recording Secretary of the meeting, and Billy Chow of Computershare Investor Services Inc., to act as Scrutineer for the meeting. Also present at the meeting today are the following current directors of B2Gold: Clive Johnson, Kevin Bullock, George Johnson, Liane Kelly, Jerry Korpan, Thabile Msimang, Lisa Pankratz, and Robin Weisman.
The other officers and when they're renominated soon, I'm gonna ask that they stand and so you can all see who they are. They're hiding right now, but they're not gonna get away with that for long. The other officers of the company with us today are, and if you could please stand when I or just wave so people know who you are. Mike Cinnamond, Senior Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Bill Lytle, Senior Vice President, Operations and Chief Operating Officer. Randall Chatwin, Senior Vice President, Legal and Corporate Communications. Victor King, Senior Vice President, Exploration. Dennis Stansbury, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Project Evaluations. Edward Bartz, Vice President, Taxation and External Reporting. Andrew Brown, Vice President, Exploration. Ninette Cronje, Vice President, Human Resources. Michael McDonald, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Peter Montano, Vice President, Projects. Dan Moore, Vice President, Operations.
John Rajala, Vice President of Metallurgy. Neil Reeder, Vice President, Government Relations. And Dana Rogers, Vice President of Finance. Now for the business of the meeting. The notice of this meeting and the accompanying information circular was filed, and the notice and access notification and proxy form, or voting instructions form, was mailed to the shareholders by May 14th, 2024. I've received a copy of the declaration attesting to the publication and mailing, and the Recording Secretary will arrange for this declaration to be annexed to the minutes of this meeting. These minutes will be available for inspection by any registered shareholder or proxy holder. I propose that we waive reading the notice of meeting unless anyone specifically requests that it be read at this time. The Recording Secretary has notified me that a quorum is present.
Notice having been given in accordance with the articles and a quorum being present, I declare the meeting properly constituted for the transaction of business, and I direct that the report of the scrutineer be annexed to the minutes of this meeting. I propose that we first deal with all the routine business requirements and then terminate the formal meeting and carry on in a less formal manner by way of an opportunity for questions from registered shareholders and proxy holders, as well as presentations related to the company's activities and its operations. As this meeting is being held in person and virtually, I would like to set out a few rules for the orderly conduct of the meeting. For those attending online, questions in respect of a motion can be submitted by any registered shareholder or proxy holder using the messaging icon at the top of the virtual interface.
When reading out a question, I will note the name of the registered shareholder or proxy holder submitting the question in order to deal with all the questions in a timely manner. Questions of a similar nature will be answered only once. For those attending in person only, registered shareholders or proxy holders may ask questions or vote before addressing the chair. Identify yourself by name, please, and show the card provided to you upon registration. Questions on the formal meeting items will be addressed as each item is tabled. Questions and comments of a general nature will be deferred until the question period. If we're unable to address your general question during that time, a representative of B2Gold will reach out to you following the meeting with a response. Voting in all matters at this meeting will be conducted by ballot.
For those attending online, to allow sufficient time for voting, the polls for all matters being voted on will be opened following these introductory remarks and closed at the end of the meeting momentarily. You will see the ballot open to the virtual interface requesting you to start registering your votes. I remind you that only registered shareholders and proxy holders who have properly logged in with their control numbers or username will be able to see on the screen all motions being brought forth at this meeting and will be asked to vote on each business item. To vote, simply click on your choice for or withhold or against as applicable. A confirmation message will appear to show your vote has been received. To change your vote, simply change your selection.
When the poll closes, the votes submitted on each resolution item will be recorded through the virtual meeting platform. For those attending in person, I understand that each registered shareholder and proxy holder entitled to vote at the meeting received a ballot at the time of registration. Registered shareholders or proxy holders completing a ballot should mark an X or other mark in the square associated with the word for, withhold, or against as applicable and sign the ballot. Also, please bring your name beside your signature or, sorry, print your name beside your signature where indicated and record the number of shares that you are entitled to vote. When you've completed your ballot, please hold it up for collection. I remind you that if you are a registered shareholder and you have already voted by proxy, you do not need to vote again.
For any motions duly brought before the meeting not included in the circular, the polls for such matters will be opened and closed as I deem necessary or desirable for the orderly and expeditious conduct of the meeting. If you plan to vote at the meeting, you may choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait to cast your vote until after an item is discussed. Once discussed on all items of business before the meeting has concluded, I will give registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders one final opportunity to enter their votes on the open polls if they haven't already done so and then declare voting closed on all resolutions. Voting totals in favor, against, or withheld, as the case may be, for each resolution item will be tallied once the voting is completed.
Once the polls have closed, I'll report on the outcome of the motions. The final results of the polls will be reported in the scrutineer's report and will be posted under B2Gold's SEDAR+ profile. I now declare the polls open for all resolutions included in the circular. The first item of business is the presentation to shareholders of the annual consolidated financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31st, 2023, and the auditor's report on the financial statements. The financial statements were mailed to the shareholders on February 29th, 2024, and are available on SEDAR+. Extra copies of the statements are available to shareholders upon request. The auditor is PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Chartered Accountants, and representatives are attending this meeting today. If registered shareholders or proxy holders have any questions for PWC, they're available to respond. No questions.
Then the next item of business is the election of directors. The director nominees proposed by management for election are listed in the circular. All of them have indicated their willingness to serve as directors for the ensuing year. No nominations other than those proposed by management have been received in accordance with the company's advance notice policy, and accordingly, management's nominees for election are the only persons permitted to be nominated for election. Could I please have the nominations for management's proposed directors? And this is where director nominees, please, if you can acknowledge yourself when your name is read. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I nominate the following persons for election as directors: Kelvin Dushnisky.
That was me. That's my hand.
Kevin Bullock, Liane Kelly, Jerry Korpan, Thabela Msimang, Lisa Pankratz, and Robin Weissman.
Thank you. I would ask for a motion that the director nominees be elected as directors of the company to hold office until the termination of the next AGM of shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed.
I so move.
Thank you. I direct that a poll be conducted on the motion and that the scrutineer's report, the results, if you haven't already cast your vote, please do so now. All right. Are there any more ballots to be collected? None. We'll move to the next item. The auditor of the company is PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chartered Accountants. Management proposes that the auditor be reappointed until the next AGM. May I now have a motion that the auditor be reappointed and that the directors are authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditor?
Chair, I so move.
Thank you. Are there any questions or discussions on the motion? If none, I direct that a poll be conducted on the motion and that the scrutineer report the results. If you haven't already cast your vote, please do so now. Are there any more ballots to be collected? If not, we'll move to the next matter. The next item of business is to consider, and if deemed advisable, pass a resolution approving certain matters related to the stock option plan. The background behind this motion, a summary of the proposed amendment, and the proposed form of resolution are set out on page 10 of the circular. The Board of Directors recommends that shareholders vote for the resolution approving certain matters related to the stock option plan. To take effect, the resolution must be approved by a majority of the votes cast in person or by proxy.
May I have a motion to approve the stock option plan in the form of the resolution set out on page 10 of the circular?
I so move.
Thank you. Are there any questions or discussion with respect to this resolution? None. I direct that the poll be conducted on the motion and that the scrutineer report the results. If you haven't already cast your vote, please do so now. Thank you. The next item of business is to consider and, if deemed advisable, pass a resolution on a non-binding advisory basis accepting the company's approach to executive compensation as disclosed in the circular. The background behind this motion and the proposed form of resolution are set out on page 11 of the circular. In addition, a detailed discussion of our executive compensation program is set forth in the executive compensation section of the circular. The Board of Directors recommends that shareholders vote for the resolution on a non-binding advisory basis accepting the company's approach to executive compensation.
As this is an advisory vote, the results will not be binding upon the board. However, the board will take the results into account as appropriate when considering future executive compensation policies, procedures, and decisions. May I have a motion to approve on a non-binding advisory basis the form of the resolution set out on page 11 of the circular?
I so move.
Thank you. Are there any questions or discussion with respect to the resolution? If there are no questions or discussion, I direct that a poll be conducted on the motion and that the scrutineer report the results. If you haven't already cast your vote, please do so now. Are there any more ballots to be collected? If none, that concludes this matter. The matter is to be voted on for those registered shareholders and proxy holders who have not voted on all the resolutions for which the polls remain open. Please do so now as I'll shortly close all such polls. Thank you. The polls on all such resolutions are now closed. I direct the scrutineer to provide a report on the results of the polls. Thank you. Thank you. I now have the preliminary results and scrutineer's report for the matter set forth in the circular.
Based on the preliminary results scrutineer's report, I declare that as a majority of the proxies deposited for the meeting have been voted for the election of each of the director nominees, the director nominees have been elected as directors of the company. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has been reappointed as the auditor until the next AGM, and the directors are authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditor. The resolution to approve certain matters related to the company's stock option plan of the company have been carried, and the resolution on a non-binding advisory basis accepting the company's approach to executive compensation has been carried. After the meeting, upon receipt of the final scrutineer's report on the polls conducted during this meeting, I direct the recording secretary to attach the report of the scrutineer to the minutes of the meeting.
All of the business for which this meeting was called has been completed. Following termination of this formal part of the meeting, registered shareholders and proxy holders who wish to ask questions or make comments will be invited to do so. May I have a motion to terminate the meeting?
I so move.
Thank you. Based on the preliminary results, I declare the motion carried, and the formal part of this meeting is now terminated. If attending virtually, I now invite registered shareholders or proxy holders who wish to ask questions or make comments to do so through the virtual meeting platform. If attending in person, please first raise your hand, and upon being called on by me, identify yourself by name and show your card. Are there any further questions? If not, then there being no further questions and the formal part of the meeting having previously been terminated, I declare the meeting terminated. We'll now have members from our executive and management team provide an annual update regarding our operations, projects, sustainability, human resources, and exploration. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Kelvin. Welcome everyone. Thanks for coming out and attending the meeting. I'm gonna run you through a little summary of where we are, but also, of course, talk about 2023 highlights and how we look moving forward. My voice may not be as strong as usual. I've been a little bit out of the weather, but nothing serious. This cautionary statement suggests with many words that some of the things I'm gonna say will be forward-looking and therefore may be subject to change. Just to give a quick summary, we've got a lot of information to cover today, but just for those that may not be that familiar with B2Gold or who we are, just a reminder. So B2Gold is an international gold mining, exploration, development, and producing company with a long track record of great success around the world.
So we have the three producing mines, which Bill Lytle is gonna talk about: the Fekola Complex in Mali, the Masbate Gold Project in the Philippines, and the Otjikoto Mine in Namibia. We'll talk a little bit about, in the highlights of 2023 about the acquisition, successful friendly acquisition of Sabina Gold & Silver, and, which their asset was the Back River Project, which is where we're building the Goose Mine. Now it's going extraordinarily well. You'll hear a good update from Bill. We're very excited about this project. You know, we took the show on the road, starting with Bema about 40 years ago. Despite our knowledge of Canadian exploration, we felt it was a hard place to get a permit, if you did find deposits when we started as a junior a long time ago at Bema. So we went internationally.
We took our culture around the world and have had extraordinary success. It's really quite rewarding now after 40 years to be back in Canada. I started my days, I won't tell you exactly how many years ago, but as a line cutter and a claim staker in British Columbia and Yukon. It's great to be back in Canada, and we're hoping to continue with our international projects, of course, but also look for more opportunities in our country. Things have changed. Permitting has been hopefully getting fast-tracked, and there's a lot of successful deals with indigenous groups, including ours. I think Canada's a good place to come back and do business in again from our perspective.
We also have the Gramalote, which I'll update you on the project, which we just came out with some exciting news about a positive preliminary economic assessment on that. And also, we are, you're gonna hear from Vic King about some of our exciting exploration projects around the world. So in terms of what we're known for, you know, I think that what we're known for is through the Bema Gold, which was the first company that I was one of the founders of 40 years ago. And then into B2Gold was a company that we, our goal is to take the Canadian, what I call an extension of the Canadian culture around the world, as treating people with fairness, respect, and transparency, and being accountable and delivering on the promises you make. Delivering on the promises you make is the best way to demonstrate those principles of culture.
I think we've been extraordinarily successful in that and continue to be, and we're very proud of that. So we're known for being very good, as I said, that we retain people. We're known for being extremely good at exploration, with a great exploration team you'll hear more about, but also very good at accretive acquisitions and buying opportunities at the right time, and then taking those opportunities and building the mines, etc., or in the case of the Philippines, improving the mine, but also using our exploration capabilities and experience to add additional assets to our projects we're in. We've had great success doing that. So that's what the slide shows you, is their dramatic production growth from zero production in 2000 or 2012, I guess when we started, I'd say 16, 17 years ago in B2.
This shows you the dramatic production growth from Namibia to acquisition in the Philippines. I'm sorry, to Nicaragua acquisition in the Philippines and Namibia and Mali. And now, of course, we're looking at, hopefully getting towards construction in the not-too-distant future on the goose project, which we'll talk a little bit more about. But I think the other things we're known for is our financial discipline. You know, Mike Cinnamond's done a great job of, making sure we're financially strong. We do financing at the right times, and we do intelligent financing. We'll be creative at times as required. And also great at building mines. We have our own construction team, and that construction team, which is now at Goose, has built for Bema and B2Gold eight mines on budget, on schedule, or ahead.
Very few mining companies have their own construction team, and that's one of the reasons for our great success, and also as an operator, we're a very good operating company, operating our mines, and that's where I think the culture shows up. It's some of the things like our ESG and our safety track record. We're one of the safest gold mining companies in the world. The Masbate Mine of the Philippines has gone over five years without a single lost-time accident. There's no factory in North America or mine anywhere that could brag that kind of safety track record. So I think if you wanna show your respect to your people, you gotta start with safety, 'cause if you wanna keep them safe, that's part of what the culture's all about.
So we don't use a lot of contractors because we believe in running our people to have a B2Gold shirt on, and we're responsible for their wages. We're responsible for their healthcare. We're responsible for their training, those sorts of things. So this slide just shows us that we have a bit of a dip this year in production. 2023 was a good year. Again, the eighth year in a row, eight years in a row of meeting our projections for productions and our projections on costs. There's no company that can match that, I believe. And also, this was through, don't forget, we went through a COVID period of time as well.
The good news is, as I'll talk about when we get into 2025, we see our production levels grow up, grow again, and some of the exciting opportunities there and beyond will take us to higher levels of production from existing assets. Some of the 2023 highlights, we produced over a million ounces of gold. Our All-in sustaining cost was, you know, pretty low, and by industry averages around $1,000 an ounce, and cash costs around $625 an ounce. As I mentioned, it's the eighth year in a row that we were able to meet or beat our own projections. In development, we completed the acquisition of Sabina Gold and Silver. I touched on the acquisition. I wanna talk about that because we had a very hard look at their project.
They did a very good job in exploration and permitting and indigenous relations, and you have to give credit to the management team led by Bruce McLeod and what they did at Sabina over quite a long period of time. So we got involved after they decided to move into construction, and then we got talking to them and said, "Well, is there any chance your shareholders might be interested in having our shares? We're prepared to pay a premium because it was accretive." So we paid a significant premium because their shares were trading so low because there's a single asset company trying to build a gold mine in the north. There was a lot of skeptics about that. So at the end of the day, that's the deal that we did in April last year, paying about CAD 1.1 billion in our shares.
Despite the fact there was a significant premium, the market actually responded well to both shares. Some people are afraid of premiums these days. The premium, what you pay, is not relevant. It's the value you see. You should not do deals because it's a premium, because the company you're taking over has a low stock price for various reasons, as I mentioned. So that was a great, another successful acquisition, and this is the kind of thing that we've done over the years to build us to where we—to where we are today. Gramalote, I'll just touch about that, a little bit. Gramalote is a producer in Colombia that was 50/50 for years with ourselves and AngloGold Ashanti, our partner. That's actually where I met Kelvin. He was the CEO of AngloGold Ashanti at the time.
And we spent a lot of time, a lot of money on it, both companies looking to see if we can build a large open-pit gold mine. And we kept coming back with low operating costs, but you know, lower all sustaining costs, but very high capital costs to build it. So we wanted to have something 350-400,000 ounces a year because it's two significant producers needing substantial production to make it worthwhile to go ahead and build. So the 200,000 ounces as a mine, half to each of our partners wouldn't have been attractive given the size of our companies. So that's where we did a study a couple of years ago, and it indicated that while you know, there's potentially positive economics, it wasn't robust enough for either party to wanna raise the $450 million each to build the mine.
Subsequent to that, we actually approached AGA and decided to look to buy them out if they wanted to be bought out. So we did a deal acquiring their 50% of the property for $20 million upfront and another $40 million if it becomes a mine. I think that's gonna look like a pretty good acquisition. So suddenly things are different. Suddenly now you have one company owning 100% of it. So all of a sudden you don't have to go and mine the lowest grade open pit. You can actually mine a higher grade core in the deposit. And now we're looking at, and we'll, you'll hear more about this as we go along, but we're looking at something that has the potential to produce 185,000 ounces a year over 10 years and 240,000 ounces in the first four years.
The economics are pretty robust with a 20% IRR. Now this is called a preliminary economic assessment because there's a bit of inferred material, very, very little actually, but there's been a lot of engineering done for years here. The board has just approved moving to a feasibility study. This is a dramatic next stage of growth for us after the Goose Project. Additionally, you're gonna hear from Vic. I won't steal his thunder, but we have another major exploration budget this year, and he'll talk to you about the details and why. We spend a lot of money in exploration, but it's worth it. If you go back and look at the history of B2Gold, I think the dollar spent to find an ounce of gold is somewhere around 20 bucks an ounce.
So the cheapest ounces will always be the ones that you find. We're a very strong cash position as a company. We ended the third quarter, sorry, we ended the first quarter with $565 million in the bank. In 2023, we generated $1.9 billion of gross revenue. We also paid a dividend of just around $200 million in dividend, mostly in cash, some in shares, and that's a 6% yield dividend and $0.16 of common share annually. That's the highest dividend of any gold producer, including the big guys. We're very comfortable with our financial strength to be able to continue to pay that. We also have a $700 million revolving credit facility from a great group of international banks, which is at this point undrawn.
So as we go through the construction of Goose, we'll get a little more into that and into the Llama, but that's what it's there for. So, extraordinarily strong financial position. We're very comfortable going forward that we can meet what we have on our plate and more as we go forward and grow the company. So 2024 is a bit more of a challenging year, and, and there's a. I'll just touch on the reasons for that. I think it's important for you to know. So one of the things that caused our production to be a bit lower, around 900,000 ounces, would be the mid-range of projected gold production. And costs are a little bit higher, around 13 or 14, $13-$14 an ounce.
The reasons for that, for both of those, and we expect our production to go up and our costs to come down next year. I'll tell you why, but at the end of the day, we were projecting to be trucking ore at the Fekola Complex, so we had the Fekola Mill, which has been an extraordinary success on the Fekola Deposit, and then we have 20 km of exploration ground to the north, hence the Fekola Complex. We've had several important good discoveries wide open for additional ore. A lot of it's saprolite soft material, so you can just dig it out of the ground, throw it in a truck, and truck it 20 km down to the Fekola Mill and feed the Fekola Mill.
So that was supposed to yield 80,000-100,000 ounces this year, but the government of Mali's gone through a lot of transition, including coming up with the new 2023 Mining Code, and they suspended the issuance of all exploitation licenses while they did that. Now, the exploitation license is a step you require for the, for the rest of, not for Fekola, but for the rest of the belt, you require to get an exploitation permit 'cause right now they're exploration permits. We've had meetings with the government. At the end of the day, we believe definitely the government is committed to gold production in the country. The Fekola Mine is under the 2012 Mining Code. The government has acknowledged that, but the new ore being trucked will be under the 2023 Mining Code.
But the economics are robust enough that they could withstand what we don't like the '23 code. It's looking for too much for the government, for the people of Mali. The bottom line is we built the Fekola mine for $500 million USD, 100% at our risk. Yeah, the people of Mali have enjoyed more than 50% of the economic value of that mine. I don't know, you business people out there, I'm pretty sure you'd take that deal all day, every day if someone's gonna put up 100% of the risk and you're gonna get over 50% of the benefit. At the end of the day, we've been in discussions with the government. It's been a little frustrating.
There's been a tremendous amount of negative rumors and media around this, some very irresponsible media, including the Globe and Mail, with stories about the government's gonna take over gold mining. Absolutely. We don't see any sign of that. The government's committed to more mining, and we've had, you know, we've had productive conversations. So hopefully within a few months, it was our hope, the government will actually confirm that the 2023 code is enacted and we will start trucking ore down, get a permit to start trucking the ore. The roads are built. We're ready to go. So we anticipate that happening now in 2025, maybe a little bit ahead of schedule. The other reason why we've had some lower costs, sorry, some higher costs this year and lower production is because we have to have some big capital spends.
You know, you've gotta spend money in our industry to grow, and you've gotta spend money in our industry to keep your levels of production. That's just the way it is. So you have something called sustaining capital. So this year we've expanded the solar plant dramatically at Fekola. We also had to build a tailings facility for all the tailings storage for the next 10 years or so. For some reason, I don't know, I don't understand accounting particularly well. Mike does. But at the end of the day, I don't really understand why the rules suggest that when you spend a lot of money in the year to build a tailings facility is gonna be used for 10 years or to build a solar plant that's gonna be used forever.
Why the hell would you take all the capital cost of that and hit it in the year you're doing it? So that's one of the reasons our All-in Sustaining Costs are a little higher. I think it's all, anyway, at the end of the day, but I'm not an accountant. So, so that's another reason because we had this big capital spend. So that's why our All-in Sustaining Costs are a little bit higher because we got hit with those. Plus we've been in a heavier strip, strip ratio, stripping waste to get to ore. And, we also have been at some, some parts with a little bit of lower, lower grade, which was expected. So those are some of the main, things in 2024. Of course, Goose, we're gonna hear a lot more about. You saw the ice roads, which was a great success.
I won't steal Bill's thunder on that. 2024 is very much a transition year, transitioning to more dramatic growth kicking into 2025. Our growth, this is what I think we're all pretty excited about. We see with the 80-100,000 ounces increase in production that we expect to have by 2025 by trucking ore at Fekola. Hopefully we'll have positive news on that soon and get some of the negativity off of our back about Mali, which has dramatically discounted our share price over the last few years. It's overdone as far as I'm concerned, according to 15 mining analysts who have an average target of, I think, around $5.75 a share as a projected one-year target price for B2Gold. The other reason why our share price has struggled, and let's just face it, it's the elephant in the room.
The reason our share prices have gone down dramatically in the last two years, despite record gold prices, is because the other thing is we have the audacity to build a gold mine in northern Canada. According to many investors, everyone who builds a mine in the north, it's a disaster. I get that. There have been some, but think of who's doing this. It's B2Gold, the same construction team that built 470 km of ice roads in northern Russia for Bema with great success ahead of schedule. We know this stuff. We build our own mines and we know the north and we know how to build in the north. You think it's tough to build in Nunavut? How about trying to build gold mines in Russia, far, far east and far north of Russia? Unbelievable challenges. That's what we do.
The other thing we're really good at doing is managing political risk. For all the countries we've been through over the years, Bema and B2Gold, we have an advantage 'cause we'll go around a sphere to tread, but we make it work partly because of the culture, partly how you treat people delivering the promises you make. So Goose, to me, it's, I don't know, I get it a little bit, but at the end of the day, we're gonna have an updated construction capital cost for Goose by the end of this month. We don't anticipate it's gonna be material higher than what we had talked about before. Yes, we had to adjust the schedule a little bit. Unfortunately, we acquired a project that was already partway through construction by a smaller company that was on a bit of a shoestring budget.
So we had to come in, pick up, pick it up and actually turn it into a B2Gold project. So we ended up moving the schedule of first gold production only by a quarter from the first quarter of 2025 to the second quarter of 2025. You'll hear more of that from Bill. So here are these two aspects of growth, Mali and Goose, that are actually the reason, some of the reasons why our share price is down. So all the gold stocks, the vast majority of gold stocks, maybe all are not reflecting the current gold price because the investors don't believe that the company's necessary to get the profit despite the higher gold price 'cause costs have been going up at the end of the day. So that's across the industry.
We're not alone, but we've been hit a little harder than most of the reasons that I've said. So we see a real turning point here. Maybe it's already started with the being able to come out soon and announce hopefully that we're going ahead with trucking, which I'm very confident we will get at Fekola. Goose is gonna be in production in the first quarter of next, sorry, mill completed in the first quarter and producing gold in the second quarter of next year. But we've de-risked that project dramatically. The ice road has got everything up there in a six-week period to have that ice road. It lasts for six weeks. You've gotta get everything up there that you need to build a mine and all your fuel and everything to run the mine. Great success by the team again.
We probably committed or spent 75% of the capital cost required to build Goose. So it's not risky from that point of view. At the end of the day, we'll come up with a new cost profile soon. As I said, we don't expect to be entirely different. Gramalote had touched on that. Bill will talk about that again. This has become a pretty exciting project, and we see it slotting in potentially if the feasibility study's positive by the middle of next year, which I expect it will be. We've done a lot of work here in the past on engineering, et cetera. If that's successful, it slots in beautifully after Goose in terms of the construction team. You know, they'll take a few months off, go down to Cabo and drink tequila and hang out on the beach, and then they'll be ready to go again.
This is the pattern of what we do, so all of a sudden here and now you're talking about 600,000 ounces over six. It's actually 650,000 ounces, a potential additional annual gold production for this company from existing assets. We don't have to go and buy anything. We, we don't have to purchase it. We own these assets. That's a pretty exciting growth story. The market is not only reflecting our current value as a producer, it is not reflecting any of this, in my opinion, for growth, so this is the message we need to get out to the world, and, I believe, as always, our chances of performing and making all this happen are extremely high because that's what we do and that's what we've done for years.
So just corporate strategy, maintain what we do, main, you know, be a very responsible gold producer, profitable, well-run, great exploration, great, great construction, great production profile, strong ESG, as you'll hear more about, but also focused on organic growth. Why go out and buy something now when you've got these projects to develop, as I talked about? We will look at other opportunities. We always do. But at the end of the day, our number one priority is to continue our responsible gold production, safety record, et cetera, but also grow the company from existing assets and go and find more gold. We do that very well as well. So with that, I will pass it over to Bill Lytle, who's our Senior VP, Operations.
Will has taken on the Goose challenge and is spending a lot of time up there, making sure the construction's on track, running that. We really appreciate, Bill, doing that. He's been intimately involved in, from running them and many of our construction and operating mines. So, over to Bill.
Thanks, Clive. Every year Clive says, "I'm gonna do two or three slides. I'm not gonna get into anything about operations," and then proceeds to steal all my best lines. The good news is for me, really, I see this meeting as almost a victory lap. I've been doing this really. He talks about eight years of record production. All those eight years, I've been able to stand up here and talk, and talk about really the team that makes the dream.
At the end of the day, everyone gets excited about the next project. Everyone gets excited about, you know, where we're going. But at the end of the day, what is really amazing is if you look at what we're doing day in and day out on the sites. And so I am gonna take, it's a little bit of a selfishness, but I am gonna take, as we go through this, a little bit of time to just acknowledge some of the people that really don't get the attention because it's not the exciting new project. And I'm gonna start out just talking about, Clive did say that, that we are down this year, and it has nothing to do with the operations. It has to do with the government not giving us a permit that they had promised us.
What I will say is that despite everything you hear about Mali, despite everything you hear about political risk, the guys and the ladies continue to perform day in and day out and make the magic. As you can see, I'm not gonna go through all these statistics, but what you can see is that we are a relatively low-cost producer, down year, but we still continue to produce high ounces from our key assets. Just looking at this slide right here, without just kind of regurgitating all this, every number, what you can see is that last year in 2023, each and every mine did exactly what they said they were going to do and then some.
So once again, you hear in the media or whatever what's happening. The reality is that on the ground, they stayed laser-focused and got it done. And each and every one of our key metrics, we met or exceeded them. And I don't just wanna talk about production because yes, the shareholders see it as cost per ounce or they see it as ounce produced, all-in sustaining costs. But the stakeholders, the people that are in the communities, they see it differently, right? Yes, they're happy we're paying our taxes, but they see it through what are we doing with the environment? What are we doing on the social side? How are we really enhancing their lives?
And so I know that Ken Jones is gonna speak, and so I'm not gonna go through too much of this, but I think it is important that I consider that not only are we best in class on the production side and not only do we meet or exceed every year on the production side, we meet or exceed in sustainability, in health and safety, in environmental protection. And that's a real tribute to the people that are not only on the ground but also in the corporate office kinda managing this stuff.
Just talking about safety, you, I'm not gonna go through all, once again, all these statistics, but if you look at Masbate, and we, this week is a week where we bring all of our kind of key professionals into town, for a meeting during AGM week, you look and you marvel, five years without an LTI. I don't think there's an industry in the world that can have those numbers. And it's actually kinda misleading because they had one five years ago, but before then, they'd had three years before that. So you're talking one lost time incident in eight years. It's become more of a badge of honor for those people to actually spend the time to get involved in the systems, to understand what they're doing, and really to prevent injuries and go home safe every day.
And you just look at these numbers. Yes, it's, it's moved left a little bit. This year in 2024, that's really related to a couple of minor lost-time incidents in Otjikoto. And, quite frankly, as you know, we are going to a different phase. So there is a lot of, a lot of people that are losing focus there that every day you've gotta pay attention to. But still, right at the tip of the spear in industry for health and safety statistics. So once again, we're, we're very proud of what they're doing. Environmental, I think anybody that has visited one of our mines or had a chance to talk to our professionals will tell you that not only are we doing what is required under law, we are absolutely raising the bar and looking at what's next. What can we do above and beyond?
If you look at some of these projects, which I know Ken's gonna talk about, what you'll find out is that there's a real passion in this company to make things right, to not only leave it how it was, but to leave it improved. And I'll just use the Masbate example where we've had more than 1.9 million mangrove propagules planted, these coral reefs that we're doing. There was no real requirement for us to do that. We did that because it's the right thing to do. We did that 'cause we wanted to leave the environment better than we found it. Local communities, each and every, and this comes right from the board and right from the CEO.
They believe at the end of the day that it is our requirement to gain our social license and to improve the communities where we work. So if you look at some of the projects, and I know Ken's gonna go over them, so I'm not gonna go through them too much, what you'll see is it's not just spending money to earn our social license. It's actually making a difference in the community. It's actually changing lives. You know, I often say, for me, that there's really two things about my career that I'm interested in. One, if I see my name next to it in the paper, am I okay with that? And it's always yes. But number two, if I tell my kids and my family what I do for a living, am I proud of that?
I will say without hesitation, I am proud of what we do on the environmental and social side for B2. So once again, I'm not gonna go through all these, but I just wanna point out the Vancouver one. As we've moved back now into the, into the Canadian sphere, once again, as asked by Clive, you don't go around the world and do these good things and then realize you don't have to do it at home, right? There's no requirement really for us to spend money in Canada. But Clive said, "That's what we do. That's who we are." So we've taken the time, we've looked at some of the key aspects and key problems which are near and dear to everybody's heart, and we've addressed them. We've looked at, "Let's spend some money in Canada," right? There's no reason we shouldn't do it. Okay.
Now, just going through each of the mines, I'm gonna go through these relatively quickly. But I, I'm gonna start with Fekola. I do wanna call out, Ray Mead right from the get-go. Ray Mead is somebody that was at Masbate. He came when we bought the Masbate mine. He was the GM there. He went there and ultimately ended up, coming over to Fekola. He's been there five years. Now, you think about those two jurisdictions, and if you know anything about those two jurisdictions, they are tough, right? They are tough places to work. And Ray, you know, big man, but really is very gentle in how he deals with the communities and how he responds. He has been a great asset for B2. He is at the end of this year gonna start stepping back.
The rest of the year, he's gonna kinda go to part-time and then next year. But I do wanna commend you, Ray, for everything that you've done for B2Gold. Okay. So thank you. He's over there. He won't stand up 'cause he's too shy. He's a big shy guy. Or maybe he's been drinking. I don't know. Okay. And then in addition, I'll just, if you know, we removed the country manager there, and we brought in a really by committee. And three of our top Malians are here in the office, Ibrahim Touré, Birama Cissé, and Issa Diarra. Everything that's happened politically over there, they've been on top of and they've been able to respond to. And so when you're, you know, 4,000, 5,000, whatever it is, miles away, it's great to have that strength and leadership there on site.
So I'll, like I say, I'm not gonna go through all these. What I will tell you is that we produced our 3 millionth ounce in 2023 there. Remember, we only started in 2017. So from 2017 to 2023, five years, and you do the math, that's 600,000 ounces a year. That is a tier one, world-class jurisdiction. Just looking at that, you've already heard me say, and you heard Clive say, "2024 is a down year." We expect, we fully expect to get our license, and I've got some slides later on on what that means. This year, if we do, in fact, next year will be an up year again. At Otjikoto, for those that don't know, Otjikoto, there was, that's a project that I built, and, I turned it over to a GM who then had some medical problems.
Two years ago, he had to step down. So we basically, it's almost like next person up, John Roos and Eric Barnard stepped in. I will tell you that without a pause, these two gentlemen have made Otjikoto go. At the end of the day, we loved Mark, the previous GM, but what I'll tell you is that we have not missed a beat. I would say that we're actually Otjikoto plus right now. Just taking a look at the production, we're seeing 80,000-200,000 ounces. We're talking about kind of record production over the next couple of years, and very low costs. Once again, I previewed myself, my own slide. Masbate. So Masbate, you heard that Ray was there. Ray left. Then Dan Moore, who's now our VP of operations, stepped in. He's left.
And now we have Ryan Ross. Where's Ryan? Way over on the end over there. And Cris Acosta. If you've ever had a chance to go to the Philippines, you'll understand that it's very paper-driven, very intensive with the communities. Everything must be done with stakeholder engagement. And they have done an amazing job. So we don't often talk about Masbate because it's like the little mine that could. Every year, it just produces. And I can remember Clive actually talking about this when we first started. It's relatively low grade. And Clive was like, "Why are we doing this?" The reality is that every year, the team there delivers on the ounces that they promise and on the cost they promise. I don't think that they've ever missed a quarter. So thank you very much.
As you can see, very low cost, very high production. Profile through, as you can see how stable it is year in and year out. Now, probably the reason most of the people came and listened to this is the actual growth projects, right? As Clive said, we've got more than 600,000 ounces in the pipeline, some very exciting projects, some real opportunities for growth. We'll start with the one that I'm on, and I need to recognize we carried some Sabina people with us. Clinton Wakefield, where's he at? Over here. Merle Keith and Andrew Moore. These are the people that are where they're at. I stand up. These are the people that are making it go, okay? They are the ones with the historical knowledge.
You've probably heard us talk about maybe this didn't, this wasn't a B2 project the way we started. But those people with the historical knowledge, they're the ones that did all the permitting. They're the ones that did all the environmental studies. They're the ones that have carried this thing through to where it's at right now. And I had a very good conversation with a couple of them this morning just talking about, at the end of the day, it needed someone like B2 to come in, and it needed what, what we often talk about is the B2 methodology, the B2 approach. And when you people ask you, "What is, what does that even mean?" Right? What it means is really care to detail and care to really put the effort in and make it your own.
As Clive said, I have personally gone up there now. I am, for all practical purposes, the GM, and I'm happy to say that the project is going quite well, and we see that Q2 2025 date is very achievable, so I'm not gonna go through where it's at and everything, but just remember, this thing is gonna produce more than 300,000 ounces a year the first five years. It's open pit and underground. Everyone knows that this thing is available or really accessible only by air except for when the winter ice roads opened up, and we talked about it last year, I think. We had to do a couple key things to make this project go, right? Certainly, we had to bring stuff up the winter road. We had to make the winter road.
We had to bring stuff up the winter road. We had to build the camp. We had to expand the tank capacity because this thing will have more than 80 million liters of fuel. We had to make sure the pits were empty because it's in pit deposition for the tailings. We came out in 2023. I joined the project, kind of at the beginning of this year. What I will tell you is I go through all these. Everything is a resounding success. If you look at the tanks, the tanks are on schedule. Remember, we have to do it twice. We have to build 80 million liters, 85 million liters at the port, at the laydown area.
And we have to build 85 million liters on site because remember, you come from the Arctic Ocean and you have to drop it off until the ice builds up and then bring it up the road. So you have to have two sets of tanks. All those tanks remain on schedule. We had to build the winter ice road, right? Sabina, I would say we're moderately successful. They certainly know how to build ice roads, and there's a lot of people up north that are very good at it. But they weren't used, I think, to the volume that we're talking about, right? We're talking more than 2,000 loads came up the road. And I'll just give you some inside information. We actually promised that we would open this thing up kind of mid to late February, and we were on schedule. I was whipping them.
We gotta go. We gotta go. It's what the market says. I think Clinton told me we're ready to open up the road. That night, because of La Niña, La Niña, a storm came in from the north and dumped basically three meters of snow right down the road. So then we had to start again. For the next 10 days, we were digging out. So we didn't open up till March, but we really got a team together that I think really performed. I'd say the MLA was very successful. The camp, 500-person camp, the container, the buildings came in. That camp has now been open. It's been open for a month. We are at full capacity, and we're at full construction right now.
All of the rebar benders, all the concrete workers, all the steel workers, they are on site, and we have a board trip up there tomorrow. They are on site making the magic. They're gonna, you're gonna be very impressed when you go. We talked about the fact that Sabina had actually ordered the mill early, and it was on site. So we took advantage of that. The mill is in. The Vertimill is going in. We've actually some of the support areas, the ADR and reagent area, those are being constructed right now ahead of schedule. Really, what we needed to do this year under our schedule was to get the concrete in and make sure we could get in the buildings. We are well past that right now.
So yes, we will face some challenges as it gets cold today, but we have set ourselves up for success. Open pit, open pit was struggling a little bit when they first came, and that really related to the trucks they had, the historical trucks. A lot of maintenance issues. We have rectified that. We are now very confident that under our current schedule, the tailings pit or the tailings area will be ready when we're ready to start, ready to start milling. The underground, when we started, one of the things that Sabina did is they kinda looked at, "Could you, in fact, supercharge the underground?" The answer is yes, you can. We've brought all the equipment in, all the underground equipment that we need right now to be successful, to mine the crown pillar, to do the pre-development.
We're more than 2,000 meters in, 2,400 meters in underground. So we are, and we will be stockpiling ore from the underground ahead of the mill startup. So on schedule. And this one's actually very interesting. This is Merle and Dennis Stansbury's project. One of the things we realized, 84 million liters of fuel leaks in every year, right? If you're gonna say that you really are concerned about climate change, that's something you need to have a look at. And so Sabina had started it. We've now carried it over to line. We actually received a recommendation from NIRB, which is the governing body up there, to move this project forward.
So we could see a path where we build the mill, we start the mill, and then we immediately build a wind farm, which will then support the reduction in fuel and the reduction in trucks running up and down the road. That's very real. And we're talking about probably in the 2028 range. Okay. The one you just heard about today, I think the press release came out this morning. As Clive said, this was a project that we spent a lot of time on. I personally went to this project over 10 years ago for the first time. And, where's Oscar? Oscar Saldarriaga has been watching this thing grow. It's been his own personal challenge, from the beginning. He's been there from the beginning. This was like the, you know, the three bears story. It was too big. It was too small.
Now we think we've got it just right. At the end of the day, we can see a path forward where we've got a 12 and a half year life of mine project. As Clive said, we're talking about producing more than 200,000 ounces for the first five years, more than 180,000 over life of mine. But really, more than anything, this project has very low All-in Sustaining Costs and a very quick payback period. So we see this. We're gonna take it to feasibility. We're gonna see what happens. But we're excited about it. And here's just the ounce profile. You know, 12 and a half years, 2.3 million ounces. If you remember the old study, I think it was 3 or 4 million ounces is what was in the original pit.
We basically have shrunk the pit size, up the grade, and increased the ounce profile on an annual basis, and that's really. Oh, there's one more here. Wait a minute. Where did I lose the Fekola one? Okay, well, there was a Fekola slide, which basically said Fekola, as Clive talked about, this regional project, it's built, right? The project is built. The government last year, or actually even two years ago now, gave us permission to cut in all the roads, gave us permission to lay out all the buildings. This was all before all of the kind of issues with the new mining code and everything. At the end of the day, as soon as we think that's imminent, as soon as we get permission from the government, this thing's gonna kick in.
It's not one of these things, "You get permission, then you're gonna build for two years." No. We're gonna get permission. We're gonna start pre-stripping. Three months later, we're ready to start hauling ore. So those are all, those are all facts. The guys on the ground there did a very good job building that, and we are ready to go. With that, I'll turn it over to Victor King, Senior VP of Exploration.
Thank you, Will. It's my pleasure to present the exploration snapshot on behalf of my experienced and very dynamic team. This map locates our current exploration activities. I'll only be talking to some of them in this presentation because of time constraints. The projects range from brownfields exploration targets adjacent to our operations and development projects in Mali, Namibia, the Philippines, and now in Nunavut.
Greenfields exploration projects in Côte d'Ivoire and Finland, and generative work that we're carrying out in Central Asia and in the Philippines. Also shown on this slide are our investments in juniors. These include Snowline in the Yukon, Matador in Newfoundland, and BeMetals in Zambia and Japan. Our board and executive remain committed and supportive, approving a significant $63 million US budget for 2024. 28 million of that, so just under half of the budget, is dedicated to the Back River project. Although reduced relative to previous years, there's a healthy $10 million assigned to the Fekola complex. We have a record $9 million assigned to Namibia, focusing on expanding our discovery, the Antelope Deposit. Moving on to Back River. We've now been on the ground for over a year.
And I, I can say honestly and truthfully that our enthusiasm for the exploration potential of this area remains completely undimmed. We really like what we've got. It's exciting. B2Gold's land position at Back River provides a highly prospective package of banded iron formation lithologies that extend over 80 km. These are combined into five project areas, namely Goose, George, Boulder, Boot, and Del. Our work this year is focused in the Goose Project area, which is where the infrastructure that Bill and his team are building. Zooming into the Goose area, the map shows the location of the existing deposits. The green polygons outline four open pit resource areas, and the red areas showing the extensions of these resources underground. To note, on this map, you will also see some red stars. They're pretty small on the map, I see.
and these are largely untested targets that need to be followed up. A portion of the drilling budget this year will be dedicated to tackling the priorities. The high-grade continuity of the deposits are best illustrated in this long section of the Umwelt Deposit. Starting from surface in an open pit, it extends to a depth of 800 meters below surface. Infill drilling in 2023 consistently intersected grades over very impressive widths. We've encountered 21, and I'm rounding here, 21 meters at 23 grams, 20 meters at 15 grams, 33 meters at 14 grams. And these are not just highlights. There are a lot of other intersections of this nature. On this long section, you will also see green diamonds that represent the pierce points of the 2024 drilling that is aimed to infill and extend the existing resources at Umwelt.
Llama is another deposit being drilled this year. The drilling is being targeted in what is shown as the Llama Extension gap there. It's a sparsely drilled portion of this deposit. We'll also be aiming to extend it down plunge. A 2024 hole results just in from the Llama Extension gap returned 28 meters at 14 grams in an area where we weren't really expecting a lot. So I think there are gonna be some pleasant surprises there. Looking down plunge, a 2023 hole hit the plunge extension of Llama at depth, yielding 22 meters at 8 grams. Zooming out again, we haven't forgot about the regional. For this year in the summer, the plan is to continue or undertake regional mapping, ground geophysics, and general prospecting. This has already commenced, as part of the summer program.
The objective here is to line up targets for drilling in 2025 and well beyond. Moving to Namibia, as already mentioned, a record $9 million budget has been allocated to defining and extending the Antelope discovery that we made in 2022 and expanded on in 2023. The objective we set ourselves for the first half of this year was to define an initial inferred resource in order to support the commencement of a PEA for an underground project. A positive PEA, if that's what we get, coupled with unlocking further potential on the Antelope Deposit, could contribute to enhanced gold production at Otjikoto from as early as 2026. To put the Antelope discovery into perspective, the deposit corresponds to a linear feature highlighted in this airborne magnetic image. You can see there the concentration of black is the Otjikoto infrastructure, including the pit.
The potential extent of the Antelope Deposit is illustrated by this feature, which extends from the Otjikoto pit to the southwest, down to what you can see there as basically white color circles, four kilometers to the south of the pit. The Springbok Zone, which is the first zone within the Antelope Deposit that we've identified, has delivered an initial inferred resource over 800 meters of extent. This is open to both the south and the north, where the next zone, the Oryx Zone, shows great potential already. Another long section. The bottom image is the long section, and it illustrates this four-kilometer-plus extent of the Antelope Deposit. On the left-hand side, you can see the Springbok Zone, which is approximately 400-550 meters below surface. It's in proximity to two marker marble units that we use to guide our drilling.
As shown, the potential of strike of Springbok is already showing promise at the Oryx Zone. Moving into the Springbok Zone itself, so this is an 800-meter portion, a map that shows an 800-meter portion of that. We've completed drilling there to a 50 by 50 grid pattern, which is sufficient to define an inferred resource. Over the full 800-meter strike that we've covered, grades and thicknesses have remained remarkably continuous and sufficient to support underground mining. Some examples of some good intersections there include eight meters at six grams per ton, six meters at 13 grams per ton, and six meters at 21 grams per ton. This, a news release went out this morning, which announced the initial inferred resource estimate of 390,000 ounces at a healthy grade of 6.91 grams per ton for the Springbok Zone alone.
As illustrated previously, the potential to grow this resource significantly clearly exists. Our drilling for the balance of this year is designed to do exactly this. Moving to Mali. The map on the left shows the location of the world-class deposits, including Fekola, our own Fekola, Barrick Loulo-Gounkoto Complex, and AngloGold Sadiola-Yatela Complex on the prolific Senegal-Mali shear zone. The map on the right shows B2Gold's land position that comprises the Fekola Complex. This is the classic long section that's been shown many times of the Fekola deposit itself. Drilling so far this year in Mali has been focused on drilling from platforms of an underground decline that is currently being developed towards the extension of the Fekola deposit beyond the open pit reserve shell, which in this map is shown in this section in light blue.
The targeted underground area is shown in brown in the brown polygon, and that represents the underground development that will happen. This is a long section of Taip an, which is one of the many other deposits that we've discovered in the Fekola regional area. We've held off drilling in the regional for the regional targets so far this year, but we are ready to commence drilling focused on extending sulfide resources on the Anaconda project. The potential to do so is highlighted by this long section at Taip an, where economic grades and widths intersected so far close to surface will be extended down dip and along strike. Lastly, I'd just like to highlight another aspect of our strategy. We continue to look for opportunities to invest in junior companies with good projects and good people.
That strategy has paid off in our Snowline investment, where they have recently announced an impressive initial resource of 4 million ounces indicated and 3 million ounces inferred, and the possibility at their Valley deposit and the possibility of a repeat at their recently discovered Aurelius project. We look forward to advancing our exciting exploration portfolio for the rest of 2024 and beyond. Thank you. I'd like to call on Ken Jones, our director of sustainability, to follow up.
Thank you, Vic. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. It's a pleasure to speak to you today. The excitement that we're talking about today, I think, is really around the future growth potential, right? B2Gold's in this very nice spot. This growth is 600,000 ounces of increased production from these organic assets, the exploration potential that the exploration team has found at Antelope. What I'd like to share with you today is how our approach to sustainability, how our investment in sustainability through responsible mining practices, by being stewards of the environment, by protecting water resources, conserving ecosystems and nature, by mitigating our climate impacts, and how investing in our people and in our communities by improving people's well-beings, by offering high-quality jobs, by creating livelihoods, and supporting small businesses,
How this investment by B2Gold serves as a foundational corner piece of our overall performance as a company, from early exploration to operations and even to post-closure of a mine. And how that performance across all aspects of the business is what allows B2Gold to continue to explore and to continue to operate and to continue to acquire new projects in different countries around the world, from Nicaragua to the Philippines to Namibia on to Mali and now to the Goose Project in Nunavut, Northern Canada. And how this investment has allowed us to grow from zero ounces of gold production just a little bit over a decade ago to a million ounces a year now and will allow us to continue to grow over the next decade and beyond.
And so I just wanna share a few highlights then of how we invest in our people and in our communities and how this investment facilitates our future growth. Our communities are the lifeline of our mining projects. And our approach to how we invest in our communities is based in two related aspects: collaboration and partnership. We go to our communities, and we ask them, "How can we support you?" And then we work to partner with them and with other organizations and local or national authorities to promote ownership and permanence in the initiatives that we do support. We invested over $10 million across our operations in 2023, and we've invested over $40 million directly into our communities over the last four years.
Our community investment focuses on key pillars such as education and access to healthcare, as we often operate in remote areas with limited infrastructure and resources. However, one of the most significant contributions that we can bring to a community and region to drive economic prosperity that will outlive the life of our mines is through the creation of jobs and the creation of livelihoods. In Mali, we're currently working to scale several projects relating to community health and food security. Our Gungubatu Agricultural Project benefits over 300 families that have been impacted by the expansion of our activities. This project can be expanded to well over 1,000 families and is serving as a model for similar investment as we look to expand our regional operations in the area.
In Namibia, we're working with UNICEF to support their entrepreneurship program for young people and have several initiatives that support vulnerable youth. In the Philippines, the Department of Information and Communications Technology has been fundamental in their partnership with us, enabling the Digital Jobs Project, providing high-paying jobs to community members impacted by mine resettlement, and we are now continuing this work at our Goose Project in Northern Canada. Our impact benefit agreement with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association defines the benefits Kitikmeot Inuit will have, including through employment, training, and through contracting opportunities, and we are implementing additional programs such as our Redfish Arts Society Partnership that provides welding training and employment to vulnerable Inuit youth. B2Gold also has an incredible ability to distribute economic benefit and create further jobs and livelihoods through its purchasing and procurement practices.
We are working hard at all of our operations to increase the amount of goods and services that we procure within our host countries. In 2023, we spent over $600 million within our host countries. Within this, we also focus on the development of small and medium enterprises within the local communities and regions immediately surrounding our operations. By identifying procurement opportunities and helping local businesses to meet our required operational, safety, environmental, and technical standards, we are able to create sustainable economic growth. In Canada, our Goose Project has spent over $600 million in country in the last six years, with a quarter of that investment directly in Kitikmeot qualified businesses. Investing in our communities, improving people's qualities of lives also means that we must act as good stewards of the environment. Climate change is one of the biggest global challenges of our time.
Our host communities and governments are dealing with impacts of climate change. We had increased heat and drought in Africa, more extreme weather in the Philippines, or dramatic warming in Northern Canada. We are working actively to mitigate our climate impacts. B2Gold is committed to an interim target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, our Scope 1 and 2 emissions, by 30% by 2030. We are on track to do this. As we've worked to decarbonize our operations, we've been an innovator in implementing renewable energy at our operations in both Namibia and Mali. In 2023, over 20% of our total electricity consumption was from renewable sources.
As we move forward towards our goal, later this year, we will commission a second phase that will nearly double the size of our solar plant in Mali, as well as see the completion of a third-party solar facility in Namibia to provide 20% of that mine's electricity needs. We're working to permit, as Bill mentioned, a wind power project at our Back River Project in Nunavut that has the potential to meet half of that mine's electricity needs. We continue to evaluate additional renewable energy sources and alternative fuels, battery, and other technologies to remove emissions from our power generation and from our mine fleets. We will continue to be at the forefront of the transition to a low-carbon economy. Access to clean and reliable water supplies is a human right, and it's a fundamental ecosystem requirement.
Access to water is also critical to the success of our operations. And we recognize the need for its efficient use and protection and for collaboration with stakeholders to effectively manage this shared resource. We've implemented a global water strategy with operational water management plans that takes a risk-based watershed approach to understand how water connects an operation to the surrounding landscape and to the communities. And through collaboration with our communities and other water users, it enables shared benefits and the security of the water supply. And I wanna wrap up now. I'm gonna close now talking about our approach to biodiversity conservation. We implement progressive rehabilitation at all of our operations to restore our disturbed lands to an appropriate post-mining land use. But I think many of you are aware of just how much we go beyond, of course, just rehabilitation.
At our Masbate Mine in the Philippines, we're working to improve the quality of terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems. In Mali, we're studying the ecology of the West African chimpanzee, adding critical data and knowledge for conservation and adapting our practices in the Malian context. In Namibia, the nature reserve at our mine supports numerous important indigenous species, and in Nunavut, our fisheries work near Kugluktuk has restored a traditional Arctic char fishery historically used by Inuit, and our caribou management measures are working to conserve and protect a vital resource for Kitikmeot Inuit, which has also been a critical part of their culture for thousands of years, and so back again to this growth and how we're investing through sustainability in our growth and nature and biodiversity, the World Economic Forum estimates that roughly half the world's total GDP depends on nature and depends on biodiversity.
And so these investments in sustainability and in biodiversity conservation, be it from rehabilitation to reef restoration or our Rhino Gold Bar initiative in Namibia to conserve the black rhino, these truly are investments in the health of our planet and thus then the well-being of all of us. And it's our commitment to these sustainable practices. And in B2Gold, from the executive level on down across the company, that will allow B2Gold to continue to create really such incredible value, value for our shareholders, for our employees, and for our communities. Again, thank you very much for your time and attention. It's been a pleasure to share with you B2Gold's approach to sustainability and how we are investing in our future growth. And I will turn it over now to Ninette Cronje, our VP of Human Resources. Thank you.
Thank you, Ken. Good day, everyone.
The last decade of company growth has allowed us to improve and strengthen our HR approach in supporting the company over different phases of operation, from exploration through to construction, steady state, as well as, preparation into closure, planning as well, and then, of course, also expansion projects. Even though every project is unique, we are able to build on learnings and apply best practice to follow a consistent B2Gold approach, but with the agility to speak to the uniqueness of each of our sites, like now in Nunavut. As such, each operation has their own fully-fledged HR team to deliver the local service and support, while corporate HR provides guidance on policy and governance and other support resources and toolkits.
To leverage what is now a richness of B2 Gold HR knowledge and skill in our business, covering these very various phases of operation, we brought our HR managers together in 2023 to share their learnings and showcase successes. Even though our focus is to continue delivering on the business and our employees' needs, we actively gauge ways to improve the service delivery to also be a more transformational business partner to our internal stakeholders. During and after the HR conference, we thus restated the importance of just basically getting the basics right on transactional HR work, but equally important, building positive and productive work relationships, and the HR resources that's needed to continue investing in the future growth of the company.
Globally, we maintain our focus on key KPIs being local employment, equity, diversity, and inclusion, respect for workplaces, employee retention, and responsible gold mining principles governance. Following our initial global EDI survey and three-year project plan, we conducted a follow-up EDI survey last year to assess the project, the progress we've made, and to determine gaps that we still need to close. We also launched some very exciting programs, such as the pilot global internal mentorship program across our sites and B2Gold's intranet called B2 Connect. Our project launched this year included a multi-year, global human resources information system, as well as a journey that we've embarked on with our executive team to better define and embed B2Gold's corporate identity.
Specifically at our corporate office, organizational development is a key focus area in the near future, with implementation of performance review and career development plans for our corporate employees while we continue enhancing our employee value proposition and support our globally mobile teams. And then again, at operations level, specifically at Masbate, they maintain industrial harmony with no reported disputes, strikes, lockouts, or labor cases. Their commitment to an open-door policy ensures swift issue resolution, preserving positive relations between management and employees. Additionally, the involvement of the Employee Engagement Committee in organizing diverse engagement activities and programs highlights a dedication to promoting employee satisfaction and involvement. These efforts contribute to a workplace culture that prioritizes communication, collaboration, and mutual respect, ultimately enhancing the overall work environment at Masbate. HR compliance underscores Masbate's dedication to creating a supportive and ethical workplace culture.
The company and its contractors successfully passed the recent Department of Labor and Employment annual inspection, showcasing their commitment to compliance. HR collaborated with various departments on audits related to Towards Sustainable Mining and Responsible Gold Mining Principles, emphasizing areas such as local content, child and forced labor-free workplaces, human rights, and EDI. The Masbate Gold Project prioritizes trust, which creates an environment where diversity is celebrated, inclusion is practiced, and equality is upheld. In a key collaboration, they collaborated with the Toulouse School of Management in France to study workplace trust dynamics and its impact on employee attitudes and behaviors. The study revealed mutual trust and confidence between employees and their leaders through acts such as delegation, autonomy, special tasks, and opportunities to showcase expertise. Overall, the survey results highlight a positive work environment that enhances productivity, psychological safety, and empowerment in decision-making.
At Otjikoto in Namibia, the main focus has been to facilitate the transition to underground mining and the impacts this has on employees involved in open-pit operations. They're doing this through a change management process, which was designed with transparency, communication, and engagement taking center stage. A retrenchment procedure was agreed with the Mine Workers Union of Namibia, and a two-year wage agreement was signed at the end of last year. Regular training and development opportunities continue, as well as education assistance and closure-specific training that includes basic computer skills and driver's license training to further equip our employees. For employees requiring job placement support, an employee career assistant hub has been established that offers assistance in creating and refining their resumes and cover letters and interview skill workshops that will help them prepare for job interviews.
All this work is guided and supported by Namibia's Atushe Vamwe We Are One culture program, which also drives all other human resources, equity, diversity, inclusion, and employee wellness efforts. As part of our commitment to the general well-being of employees, several initiatives are implemented, and the Otjikoto Wellness team offers a range of services to support employees and their families, such as professional in-house and external counseling services to help employees manage stress and emotional challenges, programs designed to support spouses and partners during this transition, financial literacy and budgeting training, as well as entrepreneurship and business awareness workshops and resources. The wellness efforts also included community mental health ambassadors training, mental health screening, and emotional intelligence training.
Moving over to our Fekola and the Fekola Complex, the major achievements in the past year were the restructuring of the HR department to better align itself with operations, successful recruitment, career fairs to support the growth of the projects in Fekola and the complex, enhancement of third-party health insurance coverage for our employees and their dependents that now see 18,000 beneficiaries through this coverage, as well as a housing project in Bamako for employees. A current focus area in Mali is also organizational development in terms of performance review and career development, but also including ongoing work on the expat understudy programs in support of local content.
In support of the organizational work, other key projects for the year include a compensation and job matrix review, HR payroll and timekeeping system enhancements, and on the employee relations side, the collective bargaining agreement is on the agenda, as well as cultural awareness training and social climate surveying. And then moving over to Goose in Nunavut over the last year, the site HR team there has also expanded, including a people and culture advisor and a people experience coordinator on site. Two Inuit support coordinators were hired to serve as a primary point of contact for Inuit employees. We rolled out an enhanced B2Gold benefits after the Sabina acquisition.
We rolled out an enhanced employee benefit and employee assistance program, and we partnered with the Kitikmeot Friendship Society that does onboarding support for Inuit employees, making personal contact to prepare employees for employment and do check-ins upon arrival at site and at the time they arrive home after their first rotation. A career development plan program was launched, which will be further developed as we head into production, with a focus on developing Inuit employees and building their skills. Inuit cultural awareness training is delivered to all our employees and contractors as part of new hire orientation to prepare them for work being done in that area of the world.
Other work that will be done over the next week by the HR, over the next year by the HR team, as we move through to full production, and prepare ourselves for all the HR frameworks that need to be implemented there is to further embed our B2Gold respectful workplace philosophy in terms of governance, EDI, local employment, enhanced organizational socialization, and just by the way B2Gold leads every day. Thank you.
Thanks, Ninette. You can get an idea about how we feel about our commitment to our people. I know Ninette covered a lot of ground there, great initiatives, and I know that we, one of the things I just want to shout out was the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, our partners, landowners and partners for the Goose Project. And Will mentioned Andrew and Merle and Clinton, the key guys there, and that came from Sabina, and that they're a very important part of the success. This is a great opportunity to bring the culture we've taken around the world, the fairness, respect, and transparency, accountability, and delivering on our promises, and bring it back to Canada. And you're starting to see the evidence of that. I'm personally very excited about what we can do in our own country. Just a quick few thank yous.
I know it's been a bit of a long session. Appreciate your patience, and hopefully you found it interesting. I want to start with, you know, thanking our executive team. We have a tremendous executive team, some of the senior executives here and others in the audience. It's my privilege and honor to be the President of this group, and I'm sure I drive them crazy sometimes. They're all nodding, actually trying to be polite, but at the end of the day, we do try to build consensus, and we're all just extremely fortunate. That was an incredible dedicated group of people that worked so hard and so well. The Board of Directors, I think we have a very diverse, very good Board of Directors, and it's a pleasure to work with you.
The directors do a very good job in the various committees and all the things that are very important in a public company, plus support management, not without question, but support management strategy and going forward. So it's been a pleasure to work with the board, and Kelvin, a great addition, becoming the director and the chairman of the board, and he had big shoes to fill literally and figuratively with Bob Cross, for Bob Cross having been there before. It's been a real pleasure to work with Kelvin, and I think he's been a great chairman of our group. I know earlier Will mentioned George Johnson. I got to say a few words.
We're not related, but anyway, felt like we were for a while there, but George joined Bema in 1998, I think it was, and his first task was to go to the far east of Russia, in Magadan, and build a gold mine at $300 gold right after the financial, Russian financial collapse. So that was a, needless to say, a shoestring budget to build that mine at $300 gold, not $1,300, not $300 gold. George transformed his company. We had a vision to say, well, why can't we be one of the very few companies ever to go from exploration to become a builder of mines and operator of mines and be a producing mining company? Most exploration companies, the ones that succeed, they get taken over by bigger companies. It's a totally different business.
So with George's leadership, we were able to transform ourselves, which is what the goal was at Bema, to become not only great at exploration, but good at acquisition and construction and operations. So, we would not be here today without George Johnson. So George, thank you for everything. I know that Bill also mentioned Ray Mead, all of his great hard work, both in the Philippines at Masbate and now at Fekola. So Ray, all the best, and as I say, once a B2Gold, always a B2Gold. So you'll always be part of the family. And Mark Ward, too. I don't know if Mark's here, but Mark Ward has been one of our keys to exploration for many, many years, and he's retiring as well.
The great thing about this is that we have continued through the executive groups to train people and bring people along to have the opportunity to grow in this organization. We do have a lot of people. We actually went to build a mine in Mali. We actually took 50 Namibians to work in Mali as expats, you know, training their African brethren in construction, et cetera. Those are kind of some of the great things we do, and we have great young teams of people through every aspect of the company. I find that very rewarding looking forward. Great strength of management at every level, and yes, I too will not be here forever, but I'm not making any bets. You can tell I'm still quite passionate about what I do and what we do.
And I also just want to thank all the other people we work with. You know, we don't use a lot of contractors, but the ones we do are very good. We appreciate the efforts, the lawyers, the auditors, all of our friends who help us raise money, the bankers, brokers, et cetera. We really, really do appreciate your efforts and the hard work done on your behalf. And finally, obviously, the group that makes it all happen and makes it all work and allows us to do it is our shareholders. And we probably gather, we take being public very seriously. We try to be very transparent. I'm pleased to report that many of our institutional investors report that this is the most transparent gold mining company that they deal with, and we're very proud of that. We work for the shareholders of our company.
Look, the bottom line is, as I said, our shares are pretty undervalued today. It hasn't been an easy year, and I think it's well overdone, as we talked about in terms of the downside. I think we're shifting gears now to a very positive moving forward. But I must say that a lot of the shareholders, let's be frank, there's a number of shareholders that bought our stock at higher levels. Yet overwhelmingly today, the shareholders voted for the directors of the company, which of course means management and they voted also all resolutions, but they voted for, like last year, I think they voted for us to be responsible miner, but also grow this company and be all the things that we are.
So thanks so much to the shareholders and really, particularly in a year like this year, the tremendous support, and I think you'll be richly rewarded as we go forward. I think that's all I've got to say. Thanks for your patience and time. I think in the back there's some refreshments. Please join us, and thank you all for coming out, on attending, inside in this beautiful day in Vancouver. Thank you very much.