ARTISANAL AND SMALL-SCALE GOLD MINES IN BURKINA FASO ...

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ALL GOLD PRODUCTION TODAY IS ARTISANAL Industrial gold production in Burkina Faso ceased in 1999 with the closure of the Poura and Essakane mines, in particular due to the collapse of the gold price. Meanwhile, gold production today is derived from artisanal mining operations, but such production has seen a severe and continuous decline since 1998. The CBMP 2 estimates that it regressed from about one ton in 1998 to less than 250 kg in 2002. This trend, though probably partly due to the increasingly scarce resources available to the artisans, seems especially the result of the new, more liberal, laws of the Mining Code promulgated in October 1997. These laws, which opened mining to the private sector, have multiplied the number of persons involved in mining and marketing, rendering such activities more opaque and strengthening informal channels. Apart from a few historical gold districts in the southwestern Poura region and Lobi country (Fig.1), artisanal gold mining is a relatively recent phenomenon in Burkina. It began in the 1980s in the Sahel area of the country (Gangaol region), following several dramatic droughts. Today, over 220 artisanal gold mining sites are known in the country, about a hundred of which are regularly active. Each year, between five and 10 new sites are opened. Between 90,000 and 140,000 persons – 30-40% of whom are women – are involved during the dry months of November to May, agricultural activities permitting. It is estimated that artisanal gold mining improves the lot of at least 650,000 persons in Burkina Faso, or one in 20 inhabitants. The Sahel provinces of the north and centre-north, in particular those of Yatenga, Oudalan, Soum and Bam, for long the largest gold producers, today still house the majority of the country’s artisanal gold miners. Most comprise the Mossi People, the national majority, largely adhering to Islam. A HIGHLY MOBILE FRONTLINE OF ACTIVITY The increasing rarity and depletion of known and accessible resources, the dearth of new discoveries, and the freezing of the best areas by mining companies, have, since the late-1990s, led many artisanal gold miners to progressively abandon the traditional gold-producing areas of the Sahel and to migrate to new, “unexplored”, ground in the south. The pioneering front of artisanal gold mining has thus steadily shifted by about 50 km per year to the southern provinces. This movement followed two main axes (Fig. 1), a major one southwest and a minor one southeast directed. The artisanal gold miners gradually gained terrain until the 2003 rush in the Banfora region in the southwestern Comoe Province bordering the Ivory Coast and sedimentary cover rocks. Since then, no gold-bearing areas of Burkina Faso have been preserved from artisanal gold mining, as artisanal miners have gradually “colonized” the entire country. The shift of artisanal gold mining to the more humid regions of the south, in particular the cottongrowing areas of the southwest, has created new problems, in particular, land-use and water-use conflicts between the mining and agro-pastoral communities that suddenly have to share the same space. This rapid evolution of phenomena requires a flexible approach: artisanal gold mining is a dynamic and ultra-mobile activity, a proper understanding of which can only be obtained by regular and unflagging observation. A GREAT VARIETY OF RESOURCES Birimian volcano-sedimentary rocks cover about 75,000 km² of Burkina Faso, or close to 27% of its territory. As elsewhere in West Africa, these rocks host a large number of gold deposits and showings. In Burkina, almost 250 gold occurrences have been inventoried in the Birimian belts. Most of these are, or have been, exploited in an artisanal manner. Artisanal gold mining in Burkina Faso is marked by the great diversity of the targets, which include disseminated gold, stockworks, veins, quartzitic or lateritic eluvium, laterite, and alluvium. Each deposit type has its own range of grades, potential reserves, technical constraints, and mining method that will condition the artisan’s interest. 2 Comptoir Burkinabé des Métaux Précieux (Burkinabe Precious Metals Office): State corporation for management and control of the artisanal sector. 2
P : Poura L : Pays Lobi 1 : Nagrigre 2 : Bouere 3 : Kyin 4 : Alga 5 : Karentenga Fig.1 – Main stages in the migration of the artisanal gold mining frontline in Burkina Faso Table 1 – The selected reference sites (April 2002 data) Artisanal miners will seek, by preference, shear-zone type targets (disseminated or quartzitic stockwork mineralization), which are fairly typical in the north of the country. Oxidized, rich (>50 g/t Au), and easy to mine without explosives, in the Sahel, such ore locally can be worked underground without pumping to depths of close to 100 m. However, though very attractive, few such targets have been discovered in recent years. Artisanal miners thus increasingly turn to the massive veins that are much more typical of the new gold districts in the south. But these structures generally are less rich (five to 30 g/t Au), minimally oxidized, and thus difficult to mine without explosives. In addition, the southern areas are in the humid zone, which creates more pressing pumping problems. Motor pumps are rapidly needed to lower a water table that, even in the dry season, is at 10 to 15 m depth. MINING IS FAR TOO SELECTIVE Today, many artisanal gold mining sites of Burkina work underground quartz veins. However, because of the major technical constraints mentioned above, this work requires substantial material and human inputs. Minor mechanization gradually gains ground: motor pumps and cereal mills, as well as explosives, are increasingly being used at new sites. In spite of this partial mechanization, the inherent technical problems remain difficult to overcome. The 3
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ARTISANAL AND SMALL-SCALE GOLD MINES IN BURKINA FASO ...

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