Casting aluminium cooking pots: labour, migration and artisan production in West Africa's informal sector, 1945–2005 (2009)

Abstract This article investigates the history of aluminium casting, a sector of the informal economy devoted to recycling scrap aluminium. Artisans who cast aluminium make a variety of products out of scrap, including various utensils and receptacles for food preparation, such as cooking pots. While labour and its history in West Africa has garnered much historical research, as has the work of artisans who specialise in working other types of metal, especially iron, little attention has been paid to aluminium casting. The oversight is significant, because the diffusion of aluminium casting opens up a history on the transnational movement of labour and artisan production in late colonial and post-colonial Africa. Keywords: artisanstechnology diffusionrecyclinglabourmigrationWest Africa Notes 1. Donald Light notes the difficulties that researchers have had in precisely defining informal economic behaviour but he emphasises its 'relational and reciprocal' character (Light Citation2004, 710). A spate of studies have been conducted on various specialities within the informal sector in Africa, such as Peace et al. (Citation1988). 2. In Zambia, for example, formal market employment rates shrank from 17% in 1992 to 10.4% in 1999, while the number of people with union membership in the copper mines fell from 62,000 in 1990 to 25,000 in 1999 (Pitcher Citation2007, 135, 143). 3. Pitcher notes that, 'changes in production processes, the restructuring of distribution networks and technological improvements' has fostered more competition, mobility, and a 'casualization of labor' (Pitcher Citation2007, 135–136). For a case study of neo-liberal reforms and international investment, see Haglund (Citation2008). These processes are certainly not unique to Africa, as demonstrated by Brazil, where neo-liberal reforms, monetary stabilisation policies, and increased foreign investment have produced a 'significant decline in union-led strikes' (Sandoval Citation2007, 64). 4. Art historians and anthropologists have made passing references to aluminium bangles and earrings worn in different parts of Africa, while Norma Wolff has written one of the only pieces devoted to artisanal aluminium production in a 1985 article in African Arts on the ornate aluminium spoons produced by smiths in Kura, Nigeria. But the artisans with whom Wolff worked used a wholly different technique for manipulating the aluminium than that which casters use to make cooking pots (Wolff 1986). Short references to aluminium casting can be found in Bocoum (Citation2005) and Morice (Citation1981). 5. Youssouf Thiombane and Souleyman Touré, interview with author, Dakar, Senegal, 13 May 2006. 6. El hajj N'Diaye, interview with author, Gbessia, Conakry, 16 March 2006. 7. Baba Camara, interview with author, Hastings, Sierra Leone, 26 April 2006; Chief Pa Almamy Kano, Mamadi Cisse, and Santigi Fofana, interview with author, Hastings, Sierra Leone, 26 April 2006. 8. The 1886 Hall-Herault method used a system of electrolysis to make more efficient the process of making aluminium from alumina, while the Bayer process developed in 1888 simplified the extraction of alumina from bauxite ore. 9. This technique is the one that Wolff witnessed in the making of decorative spoons in Kura, Nigeria (Wolff 1986). 10. This process has taken place extensively in the village of Kulatokosere in the Futa Jallon, which used to be a blacksmithing village but many of whose male residents now specialise in aluminium. 11. Namory Condé and other casters, interviews with author, Kankan, Guinea, November, December, January 2005–06. 12. Mohamed Samaké, interview with author, Mopti, Mali, 14 March 2006. 13. KMCI metals company, interview with author, Abidjan, République de Côte d'lvoire, 9 June 2006.