•Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is important economically in sub-Saharan Africa.•Most ASM activities in the region, however, are found in the informal sector.•The sector’s formalization ...speaks clearly to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).•As the SDGs are vague and flexible to build ASM into the region’s development architecture.
This paper explains how formalizing and supporting artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech, labor-intensive mineral processing and extraction – would help governments in sub-Saharan Africa meet several targets linked the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While most of the men and women found working in ASM in the region choose to operate without the requisite permits and are rarely monitored or regulated, the local impacts of their activities are significant. After examining the long historical trajectory that has relegated most ASM activities in sub-Saharan Africa to the informal economy, three of the sector’s more obvious economic impacts are reviewed: its contribution to regional mineral outputs; how operations create employment opportunities for millions of people directly, and millions more in the downstream and upstream industries they spawn; and the links the sector has with subsistence agriculture, dynamics which have important implications for food security and gender equality. These contributions alone are sufficient justification for featuring ASM more prominently in the plans, policies and programs being launched in sub-Saharan Africa to help host governments meet their commitments to the SDGs.
•In April 2017, the Government of Ghana enacted a ban on all artisanal and small-scale mining activities•The reason given for the ban was protection of the environment•Further analysis reveals that ...the reasons for the ban are far more complex than believed
This article reflects critically on the impacts of the recent ban on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech, labour-intensive mineral extraction and processing – in Ghana. Government officials claimed that a ban was necessary because the country’s ASM activities, most of which are found in the informal economy, pose a serious threat to local waterbodies and that security forces were needed for its enforcement. It is argued here, however, that projecting the ban and associated military intervention as actions taken specifically to protect the environment has helped the government escape scrutiny over its choice of strategy to combat illegal mining. Perhaps more importantly, it has masked what may be the real reasons behind these moves: 1) to help the government regain control of the purchasing side of an ASM sector that is now heavily populated and influenced by foreigners; and 2) to put it in an improved position to demarcate parcels of land to the multinational mineral exploration and mining companies that supply it with significant quantities of revenue in the form of taxes, royalties and permit fees.
In recent years, a number of academic analyses have emerged which draw attention to how most artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) activities - low-tech, labour-intensive, mineral extraction and ...processing - occur in informal 'spaces'. This body of scholarship, however, is heavily disconnected from work being carried out by policy-makers and donors who, recognising the growing economic importance of ASM in numerous rural sections of the developing world, are now working to identify ways in which to facilitate the formalisation of its activities. It has rather drawn mostly on theories of informality that have been developed around radically different, and in many cases, incomparable, experiences, as well as largely redundant ideas, to contextualise phenomena in the sector. This paper reflects critically on the implications of this widening gulf, with the aim of facilitating a better alignment of scholarly debates on ASM's informality with overarching policy/donor objectives. The divide must be bridged if the case for formalising ASM is to be strengthened, and policy is to be reformulated to reflect more accurately the many dimensions of the sector's operations.
•The paper explores recent ASM reforms in Sierra Leone and their potential to contribute to the SDGs.•Entrenched informality in the ASM sector is making policy reforms challenging and ...unsustainable.•The paper explores the links between Chiefs and politicians, which perpetuates informality in the ASM sector.•The persistence of informality must be dismantled if ASM reforms are to succeed snd contribute to the SDGs.
In recent years, governments, donors and policy makers across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have increasingly realised the potential of formalizing and supporting artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low tech, labour-intensive mineral processing and extracting. A significant body of evidence suggests that ASM has become the most important rural non-farm activity across SSA, and by making it the centrepiece of new rural development strategies being launched across the continent, it could help governments meet a number of targets linked to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Focusing on the West African country of Sierra Leone, this paper explores recent reforms to ASM, examining both their potential to support a formalized sector, and to make contributions to the SDGs. In doing so, two broad sets of formalization reforms that have taken place, or are underway, are analysed. First, the paper examines Sierra Leone’s legal, policy and regulatory reforms that have shaped the development of a number of laws and policies, including the Mines and Minerals Act of 2009. Second, it analyses institutional reforms resulting from the splitting of policy making and regulatory functions, especially the decentralization of the artisanal mining licencing process. The paper argues that beneath these changes, there exists intractable continuities of informality that make reforms in the sector superficial, unsustainable, and potentially a barrier to attaining the SDGs. Underlining these continuities, the paper suggests, is the role that ASM has traditionally played in a political economy that links powerful local Chieftains with national politicians in mutually beneficial relationships, which invariably render formal state regulators such as the National Minerals Agency and Environment Protection Agency largely uncoordinated, and operationally weak. The paper concludes by arguing that that the persistence of informality in the sector needs to first be dismantled as a rational strategy for those who profit from it, and only then can sustainable mining reforms be linked to broader development initiatives, such as attaining the SDGs.
This paper explores how artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech, labour-intensive mineral processing and extraction – has evolved in sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades. The analysis ...focuses specifically on the types of entrepreneurs who pursue work at, and innovation that occurs in, the region's ASM sites, using ideas debated heavily in the management literature, as well as complementary theories and concepts from other disciplines, including development studies, anthropology and human geography. Drawing on findings from ongoing research in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the locations of two of the largest and most complex ASM economies in sub-Saharan Africa, it is argued that legal and policy frameworks implemented for the sector are not aligned with the needs and capabilities of operators, and have therefore impeded efforts to formalize activities. In both countries, these frameworks have created and subsequently galvanized the boundary between two very different ‘worlds’: on the one hand, that of a burgeoning semi-formal artisanal group with limited capacity to mechanize, and on the other hand, that of a small number of individuals who have managed to overcome crippling financial barriers to secure titles to mine using more advanced technology.
•Explores how artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has evolved in sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades.•Profiles the types of entrepreneurs who pursue work at, and innovation strategies deployed in, the region’s ASM sites.•Argues that legal and policy frameworks implemented for the sector are not aligned with the needs of operators.•Draws on findings from research conducted in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the locations of two dynamic ASM sectors.•In both countries, these frameworks have created and subsequently galvanized the boundary between formal and informal ASM.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, now dubbed the ‘Green OPEC’ of the global bioenergy economy, biofuels have been hailed as a ‘new profitability frontier’ that will provide ‘win-win’ outcomes and deliver ...development to poor communities. Yet, in an era of economic recession and soaring food prices, their ‘sustainability’ has been at the centre of controversy. This paper focuses on the case of Sierra Leone, where in 2008, a Swiss bioenergy company ushered in the largest foreign direct investment since the end of the country’s civil war. Although recently set back by the catastrophic impacts of the Ebola crisis, there continues to be much support for the government’s strategy to secure foreign direct investment in biofuels production in agriculturally rich regions of the country. Bioenergy proponents believe that such investments will transform rural areas, in light of the fact that Sierra Leone has over the last decade been consistently ranked as one of the poorest in the world, facing food insecurity, high unemployment and entrenched poverty. But land access and control remain central to debates around biofuels and development, particularly for poor rural people living in project areas. This paper explores the perceptions of a wide range of project stakeholders, many of whom have differing interpretations of what biofuel sustainability entails. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications this may have for the present post-Ebola environment, where evolving policy discussions on land investment and ‘green’ development continue to assume a key part of the government’s recovery trajectory.
•We explore the agency of child miners in ASM communities in Sierra Leone.•Children’s participation in ASM is playing a key role in rural poverty alleviation.•Income from ASM is providing the means ...for children to attend school.•Work and school can co-exist symbiotically, when the context warrants such behavior.•Universal child labor conventions fail to capture the realities of rural communities.
This article contributes to evolving debates on Sierra Leone’s post-war “crisis of youth” by providing an extended analysis of the role that young boys and girls assume in negotiating household poverty and enhancing their livelihood opportunities in small-scale mining communities. Child miners – or “half shovels” as they are locally known – are both directly and indirectly involved in small-scale gold extraction in Kono District, Sierra Leone’s main diamond-producing area. But the implications of their involvement are often far more nuanced and complex than international children’s rights advocates understand them to be. Drawing upon recent fieldwork carried out in and around the Kono mining village of Bandafayie, the article argues that children’s participation in the rural economy not only generates much-needed household income, but in many cases is the only way in which they can earn the monies needed to attend school. A blind and uncritical acceptance of international codes and agreements on child labor could have an adverse impact on children and, by extension, poor communities in rural Sierra Leone. Western notions of “progress” and development, as encapsulated in the post-conflict reconstruction programing of international NGOs and donor organizations, often do not match up with the complex realities or competing visions of local people.
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Millions of children throughout Africa undertake many forms of farm and domestic work. Some of this work is for wages, some is on their ...family's own small plots and some is forced and/or harmful.
This book examines children's involvement in such work. It argues that framing all children's engagement in economic activity as 'child labour', with all the associated negative connotations, is problematic. This is particularly the case in Africa where many rural children must work to survive and where, the contributors argue, much of the work undertaken is not harmful.
The conceptual and case-based chapters reframe the debate about children's work and harm in rural Africa with the aim of shifting research, public discourse and policy so that they better serve the interest of rural children and their families.
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