Friends, Foes or Equals? Contextualising Stakeholder Relations in Côte d’Ivoire’s Gold Mining Frontier
Creators: name: SAUERWEIN, TITUS JAN
Publisher: name: University of Surrey
Year: 2022

description: Over the past three decades, the number of people employed directly in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech, labour-intensive mineral extraction and processing – has increased from an estimated six to 44.7 million. On the back of buoyant gold prices, ASM activities have burgeoned worldwide, as has capital-intensive gold exploration and extraction. Growth of the latter is attributed to rises in foreign investment, specifically, work undertaken by a number of governments to lure multinational companies to their shores to prospect for gold, with the goal of developing profitable large-scale operations. But whilst generating significant revenue for host governments, this strategy has also brought ASM parties and the management of international companies together. The resulting interactions and engagements could, in some instances, be described as amicable and tolerating but in other cases, have culminated in violence. <br>
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description: In sub-Saharan Africa, the concurrent expansion of both the large-scale mining and ASM frontiers has presented formidable governance and development challenges. Whilst most national governments in the region have prioritised the expansion of large-scale mining activities, at the same time they have struggled to come to grips with (or choose to ignore) why informal ASM activities have also expanded. Nor have they committed to managing the impacts of this growth appropriately and most importantly, to properly harness the potential benefits provided by the sector. At the same time, the academic literature has rather examined large-scale mining and ASM in relative isolation, shedding very little light on the factors which undermine efforts to broker and ultimately, maintain, cordial relations between those operating in both branches of the sector. <br>
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description: The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to broaden our understanding of this phenomenon through a case study of Côte d’Ivoire, an emerging gold mining frontier in sub-Saharan Africa. Through a multi-sited ethnography and archival research, I examine holistically how and why over time and across different spaces the relationships between different operators found in Côte d’Ivoire’s gold mining interface have changed. My research has revealed how in the gold mining frontier of Côte d’Ivoire, where the boundaries between formal and informal, statutory and customary, local and global, and public and private can be extremely fuzzy, gatekeepers increasingly play a crucial role in facilitating mine operators’ access to, and control of, mineral deposits. Here, the right to property and the ability to access mineral deposits are determined by a web of actors who constantly renegotiate their power and legitimacy. <br>
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description: Focussing on a reconstruction of the history of mining during the colonisation, the role of a national government and the lifecycle of a mine, I demonstrate how analysing the entanglements of different conjunctural elements over time and across space allows for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of the (mining) interface. Whereas some factors that shape the mining interface can be observed at a single moment in a single place (e.g. a fatal mining accident), others can only be understood through a longitudinal lens (e.g. the impact of colonialism) or by focusing on developments at the (inter)national level (e.g. the adopted approach to mineral governance). I argue how a holistic examination of the mining interface allows to plot these elements along an axis of time and space. This enables to visualise the shortcomings of existing policy recommendations, which can go a long way toward diffusing and preventing tensions between mine operators. This offers a blueprint for policy makers to design and implement more inclusive and sustainable policy frameworks to facilitate peaceful intersectoral mining relations.<br>