SEMAFO Discovers New Fofina Gold Zone at Mana

SEMAFO announced the discovery of several new gold mineralized zones at its Mana property in Burkina Faso confirming themedium sized gold mining effectiveness of the Company’s systematic exploration methodology.

The first reverse-circulation (“RC”) drilling results from the new Fofina Zone returned gold values of up to 4.12 g/t over 30 meters, including 9.12 g/t over 10 meters. The discovery stems from this year’s ongoing $9 million exploration program at Mana, which currently includes core drilling (3 rigs), RC drilling (2 rigs) and auger drilling for geochemical sampling (5 rigs).

Following a first grid of RC drilling on 1,000 meter sections, four major gold bearing zones were intersected. Early results show the new Fofina Zone as having similar geological settings to the Wona deposit, but demonstrating high grades comparable to Nyafé. Zones V1, V2, V3, V4 and Other Veins resemble the Nyafé Deposit in structure and grade.

The Fofina Zone is located within a 50-meter wide deformation zone situated at the contact of a sequence of shale and minor volcanoclastic rocks, and intermediate to mafic volcanic flows.

The deformation zone is characterized by strong sericite-silica alteration and pyrite-arsenopyrite mineralization. Most of the sericite-silica alteration is gold-bearing, including the steeply dipping zones of high grade gold values which demonstrate similarities to the Wona mineralization.

In addition, the footwall volcanic rock sequence contains a series of shallowly dipping silicified zones and veins similar to the Nyafé mineralization with significant gold intercept values ranging up to 7.40 g/t over 5 meters and 5.48 g/t over 7 meters on Zone V1. Other similar type mineralization was also encountered on Zone V2, located 200 meters to the northeast.

Assays obtained from Zone V3 returned intercepts such as 7.01 g/t Au over 4 meters, 10.32 g/t Au over 12 meters and 10.84 g/t Au over 9 meters“SEMAFO is extremely pleased with these discoveries, which confirm the outstanding potential of the Nyafé area in Burkina Faso.

"The discovery of the Fofina Zone on our first exploration target area clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of our auger geochemical sampling program,” said Michel Crevier, Geology Manager and SEMAFO’s Qualified Person. “We are confident that our 2010 exploration program will continue to generate additional discoveries and contribute to increasing our resources and reserves base at Mana.”

Commenting on the results, Benoit La Salle, SEMAFO’s President and CEO said, “These are some of the best results in Mana’s history. The Fofina Gold Zone discovery along with the four new parallel zones in the area, clearly demonstrate Nyafé’s remarkable potential. These findings evidence numerous high grade auriferous deposits mineable by open pit. We believe that this new discovery, which is still open in all directions, will provide many options for growth to ultimately increase shareholder value.”