African Artisanal Mining from the Inside Out

Access, norms and power in Congo's gold sector

Sara Geenen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317483212
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Artisanal mining is commonly associated with violent conflict, rampant corruption and desperate poverty. Yet millions of people across Sub Sahara Africa depend on it. Many of them are living in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), home to important mineral reserves, but also to a plethora of armed groups and massive human rights violations.

African Artisanal Mining from the Inside Out provides a rich and in-depth analysis of the Congolese gold sector. Instead of portraying miners and traders as passive victims of economic forces, regional conflicts or disheartening national policies, it focuses on how they gain access to and benefit from gold. It shows a professional artisanal mining sector governed by a set of specific norms, offering ample opportunities for flexible employment and local livelihood support and being well-connected to the local economy and society. It argues for the viability of artisanal gold mining in the context of weak African states and in the transition towards a post-conflict and more industrialized economy.

This book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduates studying natural resources and development as well as those in development studies, African studies, sociology, political economy, political ecology, legal pluralism, and history.

PART I

Prospecting African artisanal mining

1 Researching and rethinking African artisanal mining

In April 2008 I made my very first visit to Kamituga in the interior of South Kivu province, Democratic Republic of Congo. I saw miners carrying their shovels and pickaxes on their way to the underground mining shafts, traders weighing raw gold on hand-held scales in small, dark trading shops, women crushing hard rocks into a fine powder by hand. I heard the sound of metal on stone resonating against the hillsides. People were moving, hammering, pounding, battering, lifting, carrying, buying, selling, negotiating, groaning and cheering. Everything seemed to work in different senses of that word. At the entrance of one of the underground mining shafts, the owner had erected a signboard: Qui Cherche, Trouve (Those Who Seek, Shall Find). I didn’t realise then, but the picture I took of him in front of his shaft would lead me through my research. The slogan encapsulates many of the practices, norms, hopes, beliefs and unpredictabilities of gold mining that I myself was about to discover. Yet, the slogan and the picture are in apparent contrast with our conventional image of mining in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), home to important mineral reserves, but also to a desperately poor population as well as a plethora of armed groups and massive human rights violations: a situation that has given rise to the common labelling of the region’s mineral resources as ‘conflict minerals’. The DRC thus serves as a textbook example of the resource curse. Yet, in this chapter I first want to explain why this book is not about the resource curse and why the links between mining and underdevelopment and between mining and conflict require some nuance.

It is frequently argued that the revenues generated by the DRC’s mining sector have neither contributed enough to national development nor improved the livelihoods of the Congolese population (World Bank, 2008). According to World Bank (2008: 27) estimates, the gap between officially recorded taxes and potential or expected fiscal receipts, based on hypothetical growth scenarios, was enormous – US$ 26.7 million of recorded revenues against US$ 185 million of potential revenues for 2008–2012 and US$ 619 for 2013–2017. This gap was attributed to bad governance and weak institutional capacities. Countless publications also insisted on the adverse effects of the resource abundance on people’s livelihoods, referring to the high incidence of poverty (Herderschee et al., 2012). This statement needs to be nuanced though, both in space and in time. The production and export of mineral resources have significantly contributed to economic growth and development during certain periods in history, and have done so in recent years as well. Since 2003 the investment in large-scale mining has indeed led to spectacular growth (an average growth of 6 per cent per year) and helped the government to control inflation (Marysse and Tshimanga, 2013). The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI, 2012) reported that in 2010 the government’s revenues for the top commodities amounted to US$ 876 million in taxes, fees and royalties, or 5 per cent of its GDP. This already surpasses the World Bank’s most optimistic scenario in 2008. But this growth generated by large-scale mining has not (sufficiently) trickled down to improve the livelihoods of the Congolese population. Bad governance, incompetent negotiation of mining contracts and corruption impede the redistribution and productive use of the mining rents (Marysse and Tshimanga, 2013). There are also considerable regional differences. In Katanga province, industrial production of copper and cobalt is again at unprecedented levels (Cuvelier, 2011; Garrett and Lintzer, 2010; Marysse and Tshimanga, 2013). In the east, though, industrial production is now starting up again. Given the security and logistical challenges, until very recently almost all mineral production continued to occur through the activities of the artisanal miners.

Figure 1.1 He who seeks, shall find. Mining shaft in Kamituga

The term ‘artisanal’ refers to a non-mechanised, manual mode of production, which often involves individual, group and family labour as well as simple tools and equipment. The difference between artisanal and ‘small-scale’ mining, also a frequently-used term, is that the latter makes use of small machinery and may involve small, or even semi-industrial, companies. In literature and policy, the terms artisanal and small-scale are often used interchangeably and referred to as ASM (artisanal and small-scale mining). In this book, I adhere to the term artisanal. Artisanal mining activities, as well as the trade in such minerals, are generally unrecorded and do not contribute to official state revenues (although, as shown below, they do generate non-official taxes). In other words, they are largely ‘informal’. It is estimated, for example, that more than half the cassiterite and coltan production and 98 per cent of gold production (UN, 2014: par. 171) in the eastern provinces is not registered. For example, official export figures for gold from South Kivu remained below 100 kilos per year between 2008 and 2012, although real production is estimated to be around 4800 kilos¹ (see Tegera and Johnson, 2007; De Koning, 2011). The number of people employed in artisanal mining is impressive and ranges between 200,000 and 350,000 in North and South Kivu (estimated by Pact, 2010, and D’Souza, 2007, respectively). Using the World Bank’s methodology of allowing five dependants per artisanal miner, approximately 1.00–1.75 million people are thought to depend on artisanal mining for their livelihood in the Kivu provinces, or 9–17 per cent of the total population. Factoring in supply chains, trade and the broader service economy, the number of people directly and indirectly dependent on artisanal mining becomes greater still. It is true that there are severe health, environmental and social problems in artisanal mining. But despite those, and despite its informality, artisanal mining does improve the livelihoods of a considerable part of the population.

The link between mining and conflict is most obvious in the east, where during the 1990s a war economy integrated mineral exploitation and trade. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the hunger for mineral resources motivated both rebel groups and government forces to fight for control over mines and strategic trade routes, and that the profits this generated enabled them to purchase arms and continue fighting, which obviously resulted in disastrous development outcomes.² The minerals coming from this region (tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold)³ have, as illustrated in Chapter 6, thus been labelled ‘conflict minerals’, not only during the war but even now. However, the conflict mineral stereotype captures only part of what is going on in the eastern mines. First, although mineral exploitation and trade indeed constituted an important dynamic of the conflict, this does not mean that it caused the conflict. Causes were more structural and included the legacy of a long history of dictatorship and neopatrimonialism, a profound economic crisis, ethnic and political grievances and interests at the national and local level (Autesserre, 2012). Second, the mere presence of mineral resources does not offer a sufficient explanation for the outbreak of violent conflict. For example, the diamonds in Kasai province have not triggered a war as in the east. Katanga province again has its own dynamics and actually became increasingly violent in 2013 (Johnson, 2013). Nevertheless, only minerals originating from the east are labelled conflict minerals. Third, minerals are not the only source of finance for armed groups. They also rely on taxes from citizens, revenues collected at roadblocks, or trade in charcoal, timber and bananas (Seay, 2012; Laudati, 2011). Consequently, cutting them off from mining activities alone is unlikely to stop the violence. Fourth, the problem of conflict minerals needs to be seen in a broader governance context. The mapping exercise carried out by IPIS (International Peace Information Service) in collaboration with the Congolese mining administration surveyed approximately 800 sites in North and South Kivu and parts of Maniema, Katanga and Province Orientale (Spittaels and Hilgert, 2013). The research team noted “the presence of” non-state armed groups in 200 sites and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) in 265. The 2014 report by the UN Group of Experts still noted the presence of the national army in Misisi and Mukungwe (until September 2013) and non-state armed group involvement in a few mines spread over the different provinces. While these reports use terms such as ‘presence’, ‘interference’, ‘involvement’ and ‘control’, the concrete mechanism through which armed actors profit is taxation. This taxation is described as ‘illegal’ (Spittaels and Hilgert, 2013: 8) because it is not provided for under the Mining Code. It is often “periodically collected”, but actual amounts are hardly mentioned (Spittaels and Hilgert, 2013; UN, 2014) so it is difficult to estimate what the level of extortion really is. Moreover, the level of violence involved also remains obscure.

Such a blunt association between taxation and financing war seems to ignore governance realities in the DRC, where illegal taxation practices and coercion are part of day-to-day local governance carried out by state as well as non-state, and armed as well as non-armed, actors. Coercion is in fact the use of force to obtain compliance and may involve varying degrees of violence. It does not necessarily mean that miners are working at gunpoint. In their article on governance in Bisie mine, Garrett et al. (2009: 11) described the prevailing governance system as ‘coercive governance’ wherein the security provider has set up a hybrid state and non-state taxation system in exchange for protection. In Bisie mine, for example, the national army has generated up to US$ 350,000 per month. But other state actors such as the Migration Service (DGM), the Intelligence Service (ANR), the police and the Health Department were involved in ‘illegal taxation’ at roadblocks too (Garrett et al., 2009). In other mines so-called ‘big men’, who may derive their power from a variety of domains (business, politics or customary power), control and tax mining activities (see Cuvelier, 2013, for the case of Nyabibwe in Kalehe). Rothenberg and Radley (2014: 70) also documented the ‘illegal payments’ by the national army, mining polic...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Map
• Acronyms
• Acknowledgements
• Prospecting African artisanal mining
• Researching and rethinking African artisanal mining
• Digging into artisanal mining's history
• The gold mines from the inside out
• Access in and around the mines
• Miners and traders
• Access in the gold trade
• Changes from the outside
• Changes in access Formalisation
• Changes in access Industrialisation
• African artisanal mining Lessons from the DRC
• Appendix
• Glossary
• Index