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Paper short abstract:

This contribution demonstrates that formal and informal, legal and illegal, small-scale and large-scall gold mining form a continuum. Instead of looking at different mining techniques in terms of legality, they are analyzed in terms of social acceptability and contribution to local development.

Paper long abstract:

While Côte d’Ivoire historically relied on the plantation economy, its gold mining sector has grown very rapidly in recent years. In this new economic configuration, the government encourages industrial gold mining, officially the main contributor to the country’s GDP in this sector, and actively fights artisanal extraction through law enforcement. Nonetheless, over a million people make a living in the artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector (ASM), in contrast to the pyramidal organization of a dozen industrial and mostly foreign mining companies.

It has already been shown (Capitant, Côte & Zongo, 2022) that industrial mines usually settle in former artisanal mining sites, forcing already established artisanal workers to reorganize their activity elsewhere, before another company understands the land they exploit is profitable and pushes them to move to yet new territories. It is if large-scale mining companies subcontracted mining prospecting and the groundwork for establishing the local acceptance of this activity to ASM.

On a local level, gold diggers specialized in the exploration of abandoned wells, an activity designated as “topo” or “kamikaze”, are often the discoverers of new gold veins. Even though their activity is framed as theft, artisanal gold diggers consider they have a pioneer role in the implantation of the informal sector.

This contribution demonstrates that formal and informal, legal and illegal, small-scale and large-scall gold mining form a continuum. Instead of looking at different mining techniques in terms of legality, they should be analyzed in terms of social acceptability and contribution to local development.