The ASGM sector in Africa – A child of misery and desperation?

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the factors affecting the growth of one of the fastest growing export sectors in Africa – gold from the artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector. The artisanal gold mining sector was largely illegal in most African countries until the 1990s and has grown from virtually nothing to exports of at least 446 tonnes of gold worth approximately US$17.94 billion to Dubai in 2016, with some 10 million Africans working in these often hazardous mines, up from approximately 1.8 million in 1999. The study investigates the pull and push factors affecting the sector using different quantitative estimates of the size of the sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Artisanal employment
• gold exports
• gold price
• Africa

Acknowledgment

An expanded version of this article is published in Grynberg, R & Singogo, F. K. (2021). African Gold: Production, Trade and Economic Development. Palgrave Macmillan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.