Artisanal mining: African resource sovereignty or extractivism of another type?

International Summer School of Political Ecology

2 July 2026

Outline

• What is ASM?
• Drivers behind gold rush
• Expansion of ASM
• Imperialism and Social Reproduction
• World Bank turn to Development oriented strategies
• Case Studies (Ghana and South Africa)

What is artisanal mining?

Low level of mechanisation

Labour intensive

Minimal capital investment

Informality

Self-employment

capital intensive production, mechanised, seeking or are formalised and wage labour

Masuku Mooi, coal artisanal miner and member of National Association of Artisanal Miners (NAAM), artisanal and small-scale miners can be a part of critical minerals extraction

Zethu Hlatshwayo : The critical mineral boom should benefit artisanal miners ... we want to mine all the minerals underneath our feet

225 million people working in ASM (South America, Asia and Africa)

Africa holds 30% of the world’s mineral reserves, and produces 40% of the world’s gold- Payne Institute for Public Policy

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Artisanal Gold 1990s 4% of global supply now 20%.

Critical minerals, ASM 25% tantalum, and 25% tin globally

18% are women with direct and indirect services 315 million people worldwide

What is ASM? Cont’d

Drivers behind gold rush

Underlying Long term uncertainty

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Russia- Ukraine War: Freezing $300 billion Russian assets in Europe feeds central banks buying up gold

Covid-19 sharp increase gold prices 40%

Swiss Aid 2024 report: 80-85% of ASGM from Africa is exported UAE, Switzerland and India

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Undeclared ASM gold production in 2024 is 474 tonnes equivalent $30 billion (2024 prices), twice the value in 2025 prices

1980s sought to redefine the role of the state in order to ensure its withdrawal from productive activities; principle of free mining

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State-owned enterprises including minerals sector were nationalised; state was viewed as lacking technical capabilities, management and risk capital

Strategy was to attract high risk capital from foreign investors

Donor strategy in African mining to provide technical support or investment financing was to help reduce country and project related risks

Liberalisation of Mineral Governance- Bonnie Campbell

Private sector led voluntary initiatives: Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative; Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, Publish what you pay

In addition to the UN Global Compact and Kimberly Process

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Corporate and Social Responsibility drive: ‘social license’ to operate

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EITI: improve a country’s credibility among foreign investors and finance community

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• Natural resources depleted without reinvesting in assets, social infrastructure and diversification of economies
• Strong economic growth has failed to reduce poverty
• Challenges with valuation of minerals and accurately monitoring output and capital expenditures leads to manipulation of tax obligations

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Responses have included symbolic or marginal local sourcing of inputs in mining operations: lighting, fences, catering

Lyn Ossome on Imperialism

• Growing centralisation of capital that aggravates uneven development
• Neocolonial situation, unable to reproduce conditions for its own stabilisation
• Capturing natural resources and markets, entrenched structure creates and sustains inequality
• Gendered labour sustains capital in the core and periphery: Capitalism draws the reproductive labour for its functioning, but does not support the reproduction of that labour via wages or state support

Ossome cont’d

Social reproduction of working people is dependent on ‘a regime of gendered labour that is both productive and reproductive…access of such labour to reproductive sources such as commons, customary lands and nature, as well as wages and state subsidies.

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Persistence of peasantry is (in relation to social reproductive imperative) for subsistence of the maringalised and impoverished

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Risk of replicating unjust developmental paths:

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commodities are produced for the international market, productive activities are acts of survival that reinforce political demands for land, nature and commons, and social differences within peasantry in terms of ethnic, caste, class, gender and racial lines (how inequality is being reproduced)

Bonnie Campbell cont’d

Main concerns 80 mining companies surveyed by the World bank on Exploration and investment decisions:

1. Mineral potential
2. Infrastructure
3. mining code
4. Contractual stability
5. Guaranteed fiscal regime
6. Profit repatriation (higher risk premiums)
7. Access to foreign exchange

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World Bank did not engage with local concerns for intersectoral linkages or transformation to support broader development objectives

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Regional Responses

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African Mining Vision, Agenda 2063 and AMDC

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African Green Mineral Strategy

‘We have to centre the black female body in particular, and we have to understand that power, as it is experienced, as it is utilised, mobilised for the extraction of wealth, the extraction of labour value, labour power. Everything that feeds, and runs, and turns the wheels of capitalism and patriarchy. We have to understand the female body is central to this, the plunder and extraction of value of the human body is central to the systems of repression and exploitation in society.’

Patricia McFadden, 2021

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‘unsustainable transgression of the limits of nature by the extractivist mode of accumulation… and to take up the pressing challenge of a new development paradigm that respects both human rights and the rights of nature, and that can ensure economic, ecological, social and gender justice.’

Zo Randriamaro, 2018

World Bank, Development Shift

Since 1980s, $1 billion invested in support ASM (mercury abatement, child labour prevention, gender equality, community engagement)

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Problems: Scale and sustainability, poor governance, funding short term

‘Mine to market’ programs:

market compliance and due diligence processes (ensure ASM minerals continue to comply with standards that allow sourcing in global supply chains).

mitigate risk related to the sourcing of artisanally mined product for many communication and clean energy technologies (Iphone, laptops, Evs)

• Enterprises
• Export based industry
• Exploration (Hilson and McQuilken, 2014)

The World Bank aims scale up its support to domestic financial inclusion

• commercialization
• improving mine site standards
• environmental stewardship
• local governance

World Bank, Development Shift cont’d

Development oriented cont’d

• Ghana's first PRSP, An Agenda for Growth and Prosperity (IMF, 2003)

‘Current mining laws tend to disproportionately favour large-scale mining enterprises’ and that in order ‘To address this apparent imbalance, measures will be put in place to expand the scope and increase the support to the small and medium scale sub-sector with the view to making it the predominant means of exploiting minerals in the long term’ (p. 91) (Hilson and McQuilken, 2014). 

• Tanzania's PRSP, National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (IMF, 2005)

‘There is need to balance the livelihood requirement of artisanal miners with the economic objectives of the large-scale operators’ 

Gold prices 1970-2025

Expansion of artisanal mining

Can artisanal mining be transformed into a pillar of inclusive development? What kind of interventions can enable this?

Map of South Africa- Ekhurhuleni

South Africa- Ekurhuleni

• East Rand region of Gauteng (Johannesburg) 1970s important base for labour movement (manufacturing hub)
• Closure of mines in 1950s and 60s, sharper decline in 2008 closure East Rand Proprietary Mine (3.6 kms deep)
• Liberalisation after formal end of apartheid exposed manufacturing to intense competition
• Decline manufacturing 1990s, expanding informal sector casualisation
• Ekurhuleni Municipality (forms local government of East Rand) spatial restructuring decline in mining
• Promote small-scale mining, hosting meetings with small-scale miners
• Transform ASM from criminilised activity, into a livelihood

Tailing Storage Facility

• Minewaste is stored in TSF
• Artisanal miners began to work on minedumps, after mass retrenchment of mineworkers
• Large scale mines encroach on these areas and displace artisanal miners
• Reprocessing of tailing storage facilities has grown as an important small and medium scale operation

Displacing artisanal miners

Aritsanal miner (Male, 56 years old)

Working in area for almost two decades

If they find us working here they will come and close the place. You’re not supposed to work there because they have the certificate to work here…So that’s my problem.

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They found me working and they took stones and put them there, in other words…they chased me. I was not supposed to work there...You see all those people working…they chased them. Nobody got injured or died, the only thing that happens is that when they find you working they remove you so that they can take over. 

Ergo Mine Property Ltd (crown mines)

Underground mines in Benoni, East Rand

Underground, you could make 800 to 100 thousand [48, 000 to 7000 euros at 2014 rates] in three months. Depending on how many of you are working together, five to eight of you could walk away with a minimum of half a million…I went underground and found that it is difficult to work when the zama zamas were in conflict more than when we were above…there were a lot of fights.

It is still the issue of finding bigger gold than them [other gangs] then they try to force you to give it to them, and you will refuse because that is your work, and that is when they might kill you… the reason [for joining a gang] was for protection so that we are able to work because the other groups that existed did not want us to work… It became very difficult as a result of shootings, killings and I saw it fit to rather come struggle on the surface than to turn my children into orphanss

Criminalisation: Operation December 2023, Operation Vala Umgodi (plug the hole)

Map of Ghana- Obuasi

Ghana- Obuasi

Obuasi mine concession covers almost the entire Municipality which is 220.7 square kilometres.

Ashanti Goldfields Corporation (AGC) was merged with the Anglo-American Group in 2004 to create the world’s second-largest gold producer.

volatilities in commodity prices

Obuasi was occupied for nine months by about three thousand ASM miners in 2016, with the active involvement of the Obuasi branch of the Ghana National Artisanal and Small Scale Mining (GNASSM)

Response was militarisation of the mining town, and later, the imposition of a moratorium on all forms of ASM in gold in Ghana.

Decline in employment, privatisation and informal sector growth

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• Employment in mining had fallen from 22 000 in the 1990s o 4500 in 2010. In 1983, 55% of Ashanti Gold Corporation was owned by the State.
• Reforms reduced the share of ownership to 19%, with the state having the option to increase it to about 20% (Twerefou et al 2007: 13).
• The first wave of privatisation and closure of enterprises marked a shift from a development strategy centred on manufacturing and re-centred it around LSM mining dependent on foreign direct investment.
• 2010 informal sector is 74.3% (88.7% of women and 59.1% of men). Employment in mining had fallen from 22 000 in the 1990s to 4500 in 2010.
• The stoppage of production led to the retrenchment of more than 4000 workers.

Perspective into the profile of artisanal miners in Obuasi - R Ellimah

Those doing the traditional artisanal mining are indigenes. Some of them are Adansi and they come from the community where they reside like Sanso, they are indigenous Sanso people. The people from Anyinam, are indigenous Anyinam people and they trace their ancestry to those communities.

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But if you come down to those who are doing it for commercial purposes that is where you get a lot of these non- indigenes particularly northerners and they usually do not own the concession. They work for the owners of the concession. So you get a very rich person who is a Fante, or Ga, or Ewe [ethnicities migranting from the southern parts of Ghana] buying a concession in Obuasi and then employing these other people to come and work on the concession for them.

Honey Comb method- 40 feet deep

Milling workshop

Central Region- Medium scale mining

Richard Elimah Cont’d

Instead of bastardizing the Chinese, instead of hounding them away, why don’t we have a certain kind of collaboration with them tell them that you can’t do mining - but then we’ll buy your technology because they are able to recover more of the gold than what our own indigenous people are able to do. So why don’t we buy their technology and then apply that to our own indigenous mining business so that they can recover more of the gold and then save our environment in some way…

Obuasi

Women involved in artisanal mining, including auxiliary services, highlighted the impact of the State and exploitative relationships

Alberta (2019) is a 45-year-old woman who had migrated from south-eastern Ghana to Obuasi.

Sometimes when they catch you as a woman, they would send you to the top of the hill to go and bring down a load. You see as a woman? And the soldiers have wives and sisters at home. So, for us, we don't have anything much to say, except to plead with them…

Mr. Mohammed Abubakar, former chairperson of the first galamsey committee

• Around 2001, reports that a case of illegal mining in Obuasi was brought against 117 people.
• The judge stated that Ghanaian laws do permit small-scale mining so there is a need to avoid mass arrests for illegal mine work
• The judge also wrote a letter to the ‘mine instruction manager’ of AGC, Mr Y.B Amponsah. Mr Boampong (MCE) convened a roundtable discussion towards the formation of a committee for galamsey mineworkers

Occupation of AGA

• Small-Scale miners were invading AGA underground concession regularly
• occupation by 3000 miners in 2016
• confrontation of artisanal miners with a military task force and AGA officials
• Risks high: Mr. John Owusu, then the spokesperson of AGA was killed when he was run over by an AGA company vehicle.

Ghana Snap shot

South Africa Snap Shot

Conclusions

• Artisanal miners in Obuasi reject exposing themselves to health risks in TSFs (abandoned and active mines)
• Artisanal miners in South Africa are battling over control over TSFs, with small and medium scale mines competing with them. (Naturaly occuring uranium raising risks) while also
• Women in both contexts earn the lowest income and labour intensive roles, instances observed in Ghana where women take on roles of financiers and supervisors
• Securitisation creates unsafe and dangerous conditions, especially for women

Conclusions Cont’d

• Large scale mines maintain dominance via criminalisation
• Gold extracted from ASM creates value within local economies (supply networks, service activities, consumption, migration patterns)
• Demand driven from Asia and Europe playing a dominant role in rapid expansion of gold extraction (vulnerable ecological sites, marginal deposits)
• Risk local jewllers are sidelined especially during this surge in gold prices

Conclusions Cont’d

• World Bank shift to linking ASM to development goals significant; competing agenda with sidelined African Mining Vision (capacity building of ASM, integrating women in ASM value chains, value addition and beneficiation)
• Professionalisation of artisanal miners another attempt to better integrate artisanal miners in the formal economy
• Without value addition and beneficiation, ASM is at risk of being formalised within the dominant extractivist model
• Rights based approach needed to ensure environmental and safety safeguards, as opposed to narrow focus on taxation

Conclusions Cont’d

• Vested elite interests in preserving informal and criminalised status (shadow networks within the state, and civil society (traditional authorities: Ghana)
• Ensure ASM get support negotiate concessions from Large scale mines
• Research and Finance support for appropriate technology
• Artisanal miners play a key role in Prospecting and generating geological data (used by exploration companies) (Hilson, 2025)