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In Pictures: Digging for gold in Mali

Workers in Mali’s small-scale gold mines toil long hours in dangerous conditions for little pay.

Two young boys dig pits at an artisanal gold mining site in southern Mali. Their fathers also work at the mines. Many parents encourage their children to work in order to contribute to household finances. 
By Tanya Kaur Bindra
Published On 11 Apr 2014

Mali is Africa’s third-largest producer of gold. Much of the production in the West African country takes place at large-scale mining projects owned by foreign corporations, but a significant portion of Mali’s gold sector also consists of small-scale, labour-intensive, low-wage mining.

The work in these mines is largely unregulated. Children often work alongside parents, mines frequently collapse and workers are exposed to mercury and dust without protective gear.

Despite the hardships, many people flock to the gold mines in Mali’s south and west to test their luck. Many came from elsewhere in Mali or from from neighbouring counties such as Burkina Faso, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire, chasing after rumours about striking it rich.

Many parents encourage their children to work in order to contribute to household finances. Girls as young as six years old work in the mines, first coming as infants on their mothers’ backs and later working in the rivers and small water holes. Meanwhile, young boys are often tasked with digging and carrying earth that may contain gold dust.

Most children in the mines do not go to school and they, as well as other workers, complain of back problems and difficulty breathing or seeing as a result of the dust. The use of mercury to extract gold is also highly hazardous as the toxic element is handled with the miners’ bare hands.

Although gold prices have fallen over the past year and some large mining operations in the country have stopped or slowed production, gold mining still accounts for 20-25 percent of Mali’s GDP. Nevertheless, nearly 40 percent of the population still lives below the poverty line, and Mali remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

One worker, Moussa Togola, claimed that sometimes he didn’t make any money for weeks or even months, as his salary depends on the quantity of gold he finds. “I work hard every day, from sunrise to sundown. If people are making real money off of this gold, off of this work, it’s certainly not me.”

Children often complain of back problems, difficulty breathing and poor eyesight as a result of exposure to dust and hard, manual labour.
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Women, men and children search for gold in the rivers near the mining pits of Worognan, Mali.
Many gold miners in Mali come from the neighbouring countries of Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Cote d(***)Ivoire.
Women of all ages work as gold miners. Many of them first came as infants on their mothers(***) backs and later began looking for gold themselves in the rivers and small water holes.
A woman looks for flecks of gold.
Most miners have to sift through a large amount of dirt, mud and rock to collect a tiny amount of gold. 
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Most children miners do not go to school. Villages usually only offer two classes to schoolchildren - one for young students and one for children in their early teenage years.
Despite Mali(***)s gold reserves, about 40 percent of the country(***)s population lives below the poverty line.
Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, sift through mud at a mine in Kekoro, Mali.
Gold dust is weighed on-site by a gold dealer, who will later sell to another dealer in Mali(***)s capital, Bamako. This gold will then be sold to smelters in Europe. 
Mercury is mixed with gold dust to create a solid mass of gold. A flame is then placed over the gold to refine it and burn off the mercury. The process is very dangerous given mercury(***)s toxicity and the lack of safety measures.