Introduction

In rural sub-Saharan Africa, a growing number of smallholder farmers, struggling to subsist on earnings generated from the sales of crops, are ‘branching out’ into non-farm activities to supplement their incomes (Barrett et al. 2001). The decline of smallholder farming in the region has caught the attention of its policymakers, who have collaborated with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and various bilateral agencies to identify ways to counter this rural poverty. But despite the fanfare surrounding ‘de-agrarianization’ and the many difficulties smallholder farmers now face in a liberalized market, the prevailing discourse is that agriculture should continue to be viewed as the cornerstone of the region’s rural economies, and must therefore be promoted and supported. Consequently, and not surprisingly, the majority of Africa’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs)Footnote 1 have what Ellis and Briggs (2001, p. 441) refer to as a ‘small-farm focus’: they place smallholder farmersFootnote 2 at the heart of development efforts. At the same time, governments have generally downplayed the economic importance of non-farm activities in their PRSPs and the factors fuelling rural livelihood diversification in the region altogether.

One non-farm activity that has been particularly overlooked is artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM): a low tech, labour-intensive industry comprised of activities with few barriers to entry (Dreschler 2001; Heemskerk 2003; Snyder 2006; Hilson 2008). Despite failing to garner much attention in the mainstream livelihoods literature to date, ASM has become an important topic in international development over the past 10–15 years, its social and environmental impacts spawning extensive discussion (see Hinton et al. 2003; Kambani 2003; Maponga and Ngorima 2003; Kitula 2006). The International Labour Organization (ILO 1999) has conservatively estimated that the industry employs more than two million people directly in sub-Saharan Africa, the majority seasonal smallholder farmers who have ‘branched out’ to accumulate supplementary income and individuals who have abandoned agriculture as a full-time occupation altogether; millions of family members and downstream income-earners also depend on the sector for their livelihoods. The rapid expansion of ASM in some of the most impoverished areas of the region has led many scholars (e.g. Aryee et al. 2003; Yelpaala and Ali 2005; Hilson and Pardie 2006) to conclude that the sector is ‘poverty-driven’. This runs counter to the prevailing position in many policymaking circles, which is that people engage in ASM solely because of a desire to ‘get rich quick’ (Barry 1996; USAID 2005; World Bank 2005)—that artisanal miners are opportunistic, rather than drawn from farming into gold and diamond-producing areas because of economic hardship.

Failure to concede that the rapid growth of ASM in sub-Saharan Africa is, in large part, a response to the unviable state of smallholder farming, has given rise to several questionable rural poverty alleviation strategies. This appears to be the case with ‘alternative livelihoods’ (ALs), now one of the more popular policy interventions adopted for curbing the growth of ASM, which typically takes place illegally in protected areas and on concessions that have been demarcated to foreign large-scale mining firms (see ILO 1999; Hentschel et al. 2002; World Bank 2005). Rooted in the legacy of the ‘African PRSP’, these projects also have a ‘small-farm focus’, launched specifically to reintegrate impoverished rural inhabitants into the agricultural sector. The belief that individuals will pursue these activities, many of which were abandoned in favour of ASM in the first place, suggests that policymakers place little value on the prevailing pattern of de-agrarianization unfolding in sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of this article is to critically assess this strategy of ‘re-agrarianization’ by providing an extended analysis of rural livelihood diversification in the region. How sustainable are the AL activities being promoted, and is the continued expansion of ASM in sub-Saharan Africa linked to a decline in economic importance of smallholder agricultural activities? The article brings together analysis of the region’s ‘de-agrarianization’ phenomenon and evidence illustrating how a growing number of its farmers are, in fact, diversifying into, and becoming heavily rooted in, ASM. The next section of the article explores the links between livelihood diversification and the growth of ASM activities in sub-Saharan Africa. The third section of the article traces the genesis of the mainstreaming of AL as a strategy for combating illegal mining in the region. The fourth section presents a case study of Ghana, which sheds light on the effectiveness of re-agrarianization as a strategy for curbing the growth of ASM in sub-Saharan Africa. Concluding remarks are then provided.

Livelihood diversification and the expansion of artisanal mining in sub-Saharan Africa

Critical reflections

The observation that a growing number of rural Africans are pursuing non-farm employment has fuelled considerable scholarly debate (see e.g. Bryceson 1996, 1999, 2002; Ellis 2006). As Barrett et al. (2001, p. 315) point out, in rural sub-Saharan Africa, ‘diversification is the norm…[:] very few people collect all of their income from any one source, hold all their wealth in the form of any single asset, or use their assets in just one activity’. Today, no less than 45% of the region’s average rural household income is derived from non-farm activities (Reardon 1997; Barrett et al. 2001; Bryceson 2002). A paucity of data on earnings, along with an abundance of labour force participation statistics that are fraught with definitional problems, at times, makes it difficult to contextualize precise patterns of ‘de-agrarianization’ (after Bryceson 1996). However, recent United Nations statistics do cast light on some relevant trends. As illustrated in Table 1, there has been a progressive downturn in labour force participation in the agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, its total share of the workforce declining precipitously from 79 to 68% between 1965 and 1989 (UNDP 1992).

Table 1 Labour force participation in agriculture in selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa (expressed as a percentage)
Full size table

What jobs are the region’s rural inhabitants ‘branching out’ into? Although exceptionally thorough when it comes to explaining why many people in rural sub-Saharan Africa are abandoning farming in favour of employment in the non-farm economy, the literature offers sparingly few details about the types of activities being pursued and why. The recent emergence of ASM as a destination of choice for hundreds of thousands of rural Africans—and in the process becoming one of the most important economic activities in the region—has been surprisingly overlooked in primary debates on livelihood diversification. Drawing upon case study analysis from the literature, this section of the article explains where ASM fits in the de-agrarianization ‘puzzle’ in sub-Saharan Africa.

It is clear from the burgeoning livelihood analysis on pastoralists, farmers and herdsmen in rural sub-Saharan Africa that there are ‘multiple motives prompt[ing] households and individuals to diversify assets, incomes, and activities’ (Barrett et al. 2001, p. 316). These drivers have been broadly categorized as ‘demand-pull’ and ‘distress-push’ factors, or posed as contrasting narratives of choice and survival (Ellis 2006). Experiences from the ASM sector support both categories of diversification. On the one hand, there are several accounts of rural inhabitants voluntarily ‘branching out’ into ASM, allegedly motivated by a desire to ‘get rich quick’. This position has been informed by a body of literature that continues to portray ASM as mainly a ‘rush-type’ industry. Mohan (2000, pp. 107–108), for example, argued that ‘the lure of quick wealth’ leads many young men to ‘take up mining instead of farming’, and more recently, Hinton (2005, p. 67), in a report produced on behalf of the World Bank, similarly pointed out that ‘the promise of real or imagined riches often lures residents from their traditional ways of life’. Havnevik et al. (2007, p. 51) offers an exceptionally detailed view:

The…complex consists of mining and other concentrated exploitation of natural resources by local populations and rural migrants, sometimes under ‘boom’ conditions and a ‘get-rich-quick’ mentality. The outstanding example of this is small-scale artisanal mining for gold, diamonds and other precious stones, which can be a major rural labour-absorbing activity in mineral rich countries such as Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Ghana, and Sierra Leone.

In particular, the gold rushes that took place in Brazil in the 1980s, and more recently, the diamond rushes in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have shaped this narrative, which continues to wield significant influence in donor circles.

By contrast, there have been many more accounts, the majority emerging over the past 10–15 years, of rural farmers pursuing employment in ASM camps across sub-Saharan Africa out of necessity. The ASM literature attributes this ‘branching out’ to agriculture no longer being able to support rural inhabitants economically, a situation, it is argued, which has been further aggravated by Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). As argued convincingly by a number of scholars (Chilowa 1998; Bryceson and Bank 2001; Bryceson 2002; Ellis 2006), the marked changes that have taken place in the region under adjustment, including the opening up of crop parastatals to private sector competition, reductions in export crop taxes, the devaluation of local currencies, and the removal of subsidies on vital crop inputs, have made many smallholder farming activities unviable. Bryceson (1999, p. 173) summarizes how these changes have affected the smallholder farmer in sub-Saharan Africa:

SAP and economic liberalization policies resulted in a plethora of changes in rural productive and marketing infrastructure that often increased rather than reduced uncertainty. Many remote peasant farming areas experienced a decline in marketing services and the removal of subsidies on agricultural inputs, especially fertilizers, made the production of several peasant crops unviable…This environment induced a large-scale search for new, more remunerative activities outside agriculture.

There are, however, competing narratives concerning the precise economic role that artisanal mining now plays in rural sub-Saharan Africa (Hilson 2009), although both are couched in two ‘classic’ reasons for distress-push rural livelihood diversification and ‘are likely to have relevance even in the presence of relatively favourable agricultural conditions and the production of a surplus for the market in normal years’ (after Ellis 2006, p. 390).

The first is seasonality—the idea that agricultural production is seasonal, with non-farm activities such as ASM providing supplementary income to many of the region’s smallholder farmers during non-harvest periods. Proponents of the seasonality argument generally do not see a permanent transition to a non-farm economy unfolding per se but rather the emergence of complementary income-earning activities to smallholder farming, which, they believe, continues to be the chief economic activity in rural sub-Saharan Africa. Several accounts reinforce this position: that the sector now serves an important economic purpose but that it is still peripheral vis-à-vis smallholder farming. Mondlane and Shoko (2003, p. 267), for example, suggest that this is the case in the Niassa and Manica townships of Mozambique, where an estimated 30% of rural inhabitants are now engaged in ASM solely to ‘complement earnings from agriculture, which is mainly practised in the rainy season’. Maponga and Ngorima (2003) argue that a similar pattern has unfolded in certain areas of rural Zimbabwe where proceeds from gold sales are reportedly ‘lubricating’ communal and resettled farmers’ agricultural activities, in turn, enabling them to purchase crucial farm inputs such as fertilizers.

The second narrative is risk, or that ‘branching out’ is fuelled by a desperate need to avert precarious financial situations brought about by diminishing returns for agricultural produce. Proponents of this view argue that ASM is deeply rooted, and that its low barriers to entry enable people to rapidly escape poverty (Barry 1996; Keita 2001; Kambani 2003; Childs 2008). This school contests, for the most part, that ASM has replaced agriculture as the main economic activity in rural sub-Saharan Africa. In other areas of Zimbabwe, for example, it has been reported that intermittent drought and price rises have turned alluvial gold panning ‘into a full-time economic activity supporting the livelihoods of over half a million Zimbabweans both directly and indirectly’ (Maponga and Meck 2003, p. 353). A study by Dreschler (2001, p. 137) supports this claim:

In several studies carried out on the subsector in Zimbabwe, nearly all of the miners cited harsh economic conditions resulting from the retrenchment of workers from paid employment and high unemployment levels as the main reasons for going into mining. The situation had been further aggravated by poor agricultural yields due to erratic rainfall patterns. Small-scale mining, and gold mining in particular, is seen as a panacea for survival in such harsh living conditions.

In addition to Zimbabwe, there are reports that ASM has firmly taken root in other rural stretches of sub-Saharan Africa, including sections of Ghana and Tanzania (Banchirigah 2008; Fisher et al. 2009; Tschakert 2009).

Whilst seriously downplayed in policymaking circles, the evidence points to the risk narrative applying in the majority of cases: that the rural farmers now found in abundance in ASM camps throughout sub-Saharan Africa, who were driven to diversify their income portfolios to avoid poverty, now view mining work as their principal source of livelihood.

A policy disconnection

Why, despite its obvious and growing socio-economic importance, does ASM continue to be overlooked in rural development programs in sub-Saharan Africa? Specifically, why does the region’s development policy machinery—namely, its PRSPs—fail to take stock of the sector’s growing significance, and in many cases, seriously downplay its role in the region’s rural economy? It is argued that there are two reasons for this ‘policy lag’.

The first is the longstanding, negative perception of ASM, particularly regarding its activities in sub-Saharan Africa: rather than being seen as a product of a wider livelihood diversification process, the sector continues to be condemned in policymaking circles. Bush (2009, p. 57) captures this in his assessment of the Ghana case, explaining that whilst illegal (unregistered) artisanal miners are ‘famously denounced as criminals, vandals, environmental polluters and self-harmers’, there continues to be a minimal recognition in policy of how ‘they promote both their own livelihoods and those of the communities that live alongside their operations’. Perhaps more significantly, however, the decision of many host governments and donors to condemn illegal artisanal mining reflects an unwillingness to accept responsibility for a ‘problem’ which they have helped to create. Before adopting the mining policy prescriptions of the World Bank, few governments in sub-Saharan Africa monitored ASM, let alone differentiated between a legal and an illegal artisanal mine operator in national legislation. For the most part, ASM was seen as a menial economic activity that provided meagre supplementary incomes to a small segment of African society whose operators were left to their own devices. However, in the 1990s, several African governments, with support from the World Bank, overhauled national mineral policies in a desperate attempt to attract foreign investment to finance large-scale mine development (Otto 1997; Bridge 2004). In many cases, ASM was subsequently formalized, also with the support of Bank monies: by the end of 1995, 36 African countries had legalized the industry—a move described by Chachage (1995, p. 47) as the ‘officialization of hitherto illicit activities’—and had established sector-specific administrative and technical institutions, or were in the process of doing so (Fisher 2007). There was consensus at the time that ASM needed to be formalized: that if ‘not properly managed or assimilated into a nation’s or region’s formal economic structure, the sector can engender considerable negative effects on individuals and communities, and the broader national and international ramifications can be substantial’ (World Bank 2005, p. 13).

There is little denying that the enactment of a regulatory framework is an essential step towards facilitating the development of a vibrant and more efficient ASM sector (see MMSD 2002; UNECA 2003; World Bank 2005). However, many of the policies and laws implemented under the auspices of the Bank have done little to encourage artisanal miners to operate in the legal domain. On the one hand, the formalization of ASM in sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, has, for the most part, been a ‘legislative afterthought’, taking place after concessions were allocated to foreign large-scale mining and mineral exploration companies, which, in many cases, has left prospective small-scale operators with few opportunities to obtain land. In Ghana, for example, an estimated 12% of land is currently under concession to mining and mineral exploration companies (Ghana Chamber of Mines 2006), and in Uganda, the large-scale mining and quarrying sector is growing at a rate of 11% per annum (Government of Uganda 2005). In addition to a shortage of land resources, to secure a license, prospective small-scale miners are often required to make costly payments for processing their applications, undertake arduous geological assessments, and wait lengthy periods for decisions from bureaucrats. This became evident at an early stage of ASM reform, prompting officers at the International Labour Organization to critically reflect upon the situation in the seminal report, Social and Labour Issues in Small-Scale Mines:

Small-scale mining is bedeviled with too many regulations that are mostly designed to constrain it…There is therefore little incentive for small-scale mines to conform, particularly if the risks of being caught and of sanctions being applied are minimal. If small-scale mining is to be encouraged to operate legally, legislation must be (at least) even-handed in allowing small-scale miners access to suitable land for prospecting and mining activities. It must be “user friendly” as far as the issuing of permits and the granting of licenses are concerned—permits that provide clear security of tenure for a reasonable period so that small-scale mining can become established. (ILO 1999, np)

In Zambia, for example, operations ‘are rarely licensed due to financial inability to pay the statutory annual mining license fees’ (Kambani 2003, p. 143). Similarly, in Ghana where there are also ‘high transaction costs with obtaining a license’ (Tschakert and Singha 2007, p. 1305), only a handful of the country’s tens of thousands of ‘pit owners’ are in possession of a Small-Scale Gold Mining License.

A second factor contributing to the ‘policy lag’ is the continued belief that support for smallholder (subsistence) farming is a panacea to the rural poverty problem in sub-Saharan Africa. The justification for this stems from the evidence that points to agriculture accounting for a significant share of the region’s GDP (30%) and it employing the majority (approximately 65%) of its people (Bach and Pinstrup-Andersen 2008). These numbers have fuelled considerable zeal in donor circles, helping to shape the poverty alleviation strategies outlined in the PRSPs of most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Tanzania’s first PRSP, for example, states that ‘the poor are concentrated in subsistence agriculture’ (IMF 2003a, p. 6), leading policymakers to subsequently note in the country’s Third Progress Report that ‘constraints facing agriculture require expeditious actions with regard to financing mechanisms, investment and provision of support services’ (IMF 2004, p. 6). Similarly, Mozambique’s initial PRSP identifies ‘low productivity in the family agriculture sector’ as a principal cause of poverty in the country, and outlines ambitious plans to expand activities through ‘the support of rural extension programs based on specific crops and technologies, as well as improvement in the financial system’ (IMF 2001, pp. 3–4). In these, and the PRSPs of other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana and Mali, intensified support to smallholder agriculture is championed as the principal solution to rural poverty.

A sector’s contribution to GDP, however, is rarely a representative indicator of economic prosperity. Specifically, and as pointed out by a host of scholars (e.g. Fuess 1998; Vintrova 2005), GDP ‘was never intended to measure well-being…[because it] fails to distinguish between costs and benefits, productive activities and destructive ones, or sustainable and unsustainable practices’ (Maro 2007, p. 5). The data in this particular context reveal sparingly little about the composition of the farming sector in sub-Saharan Africa and, more broadly, the precise economic role smallholder agriculture now plays in the region. Despite accounting for a significant share of total production, in many cases, smallholder farmers are simply producing for subsistence purposes and not for export.

The problems which confront African smallholders today, including production risks and minimal access to the financial services needed to help them work in arduous conditions, have been well documented (Bryceson 1996; FARM Africa 2004; Ellis 2006); and, have proved, in many cases, to be formidable barriers to accessing national and international markets. Export-based agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa continues to be dominated by large-scale producers, which because of their financial dominance, have managed to squeeze relatively isolated subsistence producers from the marketplace. The region’s smallholder coffee production, for example, has declined in recent years due to a combination of inefficient marketing, high input costs and a lack of credit facilities (Hillocks 2007). In Malawi, one of Africa’s major coffee producers, the estate sector accounts for 95% of national coffee production and is the source of the highest yields in sub-Saharan Africa; by comparison, its smallholder sector produces some of the lowest yields in the world (Hillocks 2007). A similar disparity persists in the cocoa sector in Ghana, where, in the Ashanti Region of the country, 32% of farmers receive 94% of gross income, with the remaining 68% receiving only 6% (Dordunoo and Sackey 1997). A recent survey carried out by Baah (2008) provides further insight into the challenges faced by the country’s smallholder cocoa farmers. The author reports that 48% of surveyed respondents face financial constraints and an additional 27.1% have been unable to access credit. Whilst ‘Fair Trade’ schemes have helped to address some of these problems not only in Ghana but also in Tanzania and Kenya (see e.g. Raynolds 2002; Levi and Linton 2003; Fridell 2006), ‘ethically’ sourced crops still account for a disproportionately small share of Africa’s agricultural production.

Apart from failing to shed much light on well-being, statistics on GDP rarely provide accurate data on the economic impacts of the informal sector (Lacko 2000; Ayyagari et al. 2007; Feige and Urban 2008; Ilahiane and Sherry 2008): in many developing countries, informal sector activities are the source of the majority of jobs and make a large contribution to national GDP. This is particularly significant for artisanal mining which, despite its significance as an employment engine in sub-Saharan Africa, comprises ‘un-officialized’ activities, the output from which is rarely included in national statistics because operators funnel production to national coffers through ‘underground’ channels. For example, as explained by Hinton (2005 p. 5), since ‘most gold production in Uganda can be attributed to small legal and illegal producers—and even formal operators have the opportunity to undertake their transactions through undisclosed channels—the amount recorded likely underrepresents actual production’. Similarly, in Burkina Faso, small-scale gold mining employs over 200,000 people at 200 sites, but it is recorded to contribute only 10% of GDP, and consequently, is downplayed in rural poverty reduction schemes in favour of agriculture, which allegedly contributes 30–40% (Gueye 2001).

Moreover, any decision to promote agriculture as a ‘rural poverty solution’ over mining on the basis of contribution to GDP reflects some selectivity on the part of policymakers. Despite growing recognition that industrial, large-scale mining contributes minimally to national GDP—that recent booms in mineral production, facilitated in large part by overhauling mineral codes to attract previously-wary foreign investors have netted host countries few profits—a model of export-led mineral growth continues to be pushed by multilateral organizations, bilateral agencies and host governments. World Bank officials, for example, highlight how gold mine production in Mali increased eightfold in the 1990s, and in Tanzania, how the value of gold exports rose from US$3.34 to US$120.53 million between 1998 and 2000 (World Bank 2004; Hilson and Maconachie 2009). Yet, the former contributes a paltry 3.5% to national GDP,Footnote 3 and in the latter, the consensus is that despite the boom, ‘gold still contributes a relatively small share of the country’s economy’ at 5–15% (Jul-Larsen et al. 2006, p. 10). The PRSPs of mineral-rich sub-Saharan Africa, including those of Burkina Faso, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda and Ghana, also champion the importance of export-led mineral production.

In summary, it is challenging to uncover sufficient detail about the dynamics of a sector such as agriculture and the earnings of its principal players from GDP alone; moreover, these data reveal little about the importance of a primarily underground industry such as ASM, the economic contribution of which does not factor into these data. Whilst a prevailing trend of ‘de-agrarianization’ suggests much to the contrary, African PRSPs have collectively painted the picture that intensified support for smallholder farming is the solution to the continent’s mounting rural poverty problem. The momentum generated by the PRSP exercise, therefore, has spawned a host of economic development programs that do not necessarily accurately reflect the realities on the ground. This is particularly significant in the context of ASM in sub-Saharan Africa.

Managing the growth of illegal artisanal mining in sub-Saharan Africa

Following the partitioning of mineralized areas of sub-Saharan Africa to foreign parties, illegal ASM activity began to increase, forcing many of the region’s governments to take immediate action to control what was seen to be an inconvenient and mounting problem. As explained previously, at the time, policymakers and officers at donor bodies such as the World Bank were vocal about how this phenomenon was associated with mounting poverty—that the rise of illegal artisanal mining activities and increased hardship were strongly correlated. Actions that have since been taken to address the ‘problem’, however, suggested otherwise: when minimal progress was made with controlling illegal activities through laws and regulations, these parties, along with collaborating media channels, began to portray the sector as an industry comprised of ‘wildcat’ operators who provide minimal economic benefits and cause a number of problems (environmental degradation, spreading infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, etc.).

Initially, the challenge of formalizing illegal ASM activities was tackled ad hoc, with policymakers electing to implement a host of incentives for operators who had managed to secure a license and therefore legitimize themselves in the eyes of newly implemented laws. For the most part, these exercises have targeted legal operators, at the same time failing to mobilize the parties operating illegally that are clearly in the greatest need of assistance and have encountered several problems in their attempts to secure a license. This could explain why, over the past decade, the millions of dollars pledged to support ASM in sub-Saharan Africa have failed to facilitate significant change: the equipment, credit support schemes, training programs and logistical support emanating from this project work (see e.g. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) 2003; Yakubu 2002; World Bank 2005) have mainly benefited the small group of operators who have managed to secure a plot of land and/or a license. What was needed at this early stage of ASM regularization was for governments to revisit the legalization issue, and take on board the recommendations made by several experts at the time (e.g. Davidson 1993; Kumar and Amaratunga 1994; Labonne 1994) to simplify regulations and licensing schemes—to overhaul procedures for miners to secure a license and operate legally. The laws and the accompanying project work implemented to formalize ASM would establish the sharp division between the region’s licensed and unlicensed operators projected in policy today.Footnote 4

Governments and donors have since furthered the divide: in reflecting on how few people have managed to secure small-scale mining licenses over the years, policymakers have conjured ideas that artisanal miners are deliberately evading legislation, which is not always the case. Failing to recognize that bureaucratic policies and a shortage of mineralized lands may be contributing to low levels of legality (see ILO 1999; Hilson and Potter 2005), many African governments have begun combating the rapid surge of ASM activities with force. Specifically, over the past 10–15 years, there have been several government-led military ‘sweeps’ of ASM camps throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Additional sweeps have been spearheaded and for the most part financed by large-scale miners keen on protecting their ‘investments’.Footnote 5 AngloGold-Ashanti, for example, which has operations in Ghana, Guinea, Tanzania, Mali, Namibia and South Africa, and exploration sites in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has made it no secret that actions taken to forcibly remove illegal miners from company concessions are, in the view of their officers, well justified:

Regarding security and human rights considerations, the company acknowledges and supports the rights and obligations of governments to uphold the law and to prosecute people who act outside it. The company is also supportive of government efforts to protect its assets and its employees. Where individuals or groups of people trespass on company property or undertake unlawful mining activity, AngloGold Ashanti will take appropriate action to remove them and hand them over to the police for action to be taken against them in terms of the law.Footnote 6

Companies such as Barrick Gold, which operates the Bulyanhulu Mine in Northwest Tanzania, and Anvil Mining, the majority owner of the Kulu Project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, also regularly call upon local security forces to remove illegal artisanal miners from concessions.

Due to their exorbitant costs, sweeps are only carried out periodically; this enables illegal artisanal miners to re-mobilize, return and resume their activities. Importantly, however, sweeps result not only in numerous human rights abuses but also in the seizure of equipment and destruction of shelters, work stations and tools, which has crippling, and lasting, economic impacts in rural communities. As Banchirigah (2008) points out, a main reason why illegal miners find it so difficult to detach themselves from their activities is the need to recover the investment initially injected into operations. Miners typically see continued involvement in the sector as the only means of recouping their debts, which fits into a broader debate about the poverty trap plaguing the ASM sector. Noetstaller (1996) was among the first to argue that illegal miners often find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, fuelled by, inter alia, the use of inappropriate technologies, low returns and limited investment capacity. Moreover, most are unable to access loans or credit: because of the uncertainty of yields, operators’ illegal status, and a lack of capital and collateral, ‘…financing institutions consider the artisanal mining sector to be too risky for them to be a part of… [and those] that are willing to deal with small-scale miners tend to charge high interest rates’ (Hentschel et al. 2002, p. 56). This often forces individuals to secure monies for investment through an intermediary—gold buyers and foreigners—though typically on inequitable terms. Operators become further indebted to these parties when their equipment is seized or damaged during a sweep, in turn, forcing them to scramble to find even more funds to relieve mounting debts. Ironically, sweeps, which are often branded ‘agents of change’ and still seen by many policymakers as an effective means for controlling illegal mining, typically have the opposite effect, leading operators desperate to recover lost finances to become even more rooted in an industry typically viewed by participants as the only way of escaping poverty.

Whilst governments have been less receptive towards the ASM-poverty trap idea, the recent decision made in many African countries to deemphasize sweeps in policy and concurrently discourage illegal mining through the promotion of ‘alternative livelihood’ (AL) projects does, at least in part, imply that there is now some recognition of the importance of developing and diversifying the economies of rural communities that have become rooted in ASM. This shift in approach also signifies that governments and donors alike have finally come to grips with the importance of being more proactive in preventing the continued growth of the sector along its present trajectory: ASM is poverty-driven, and will continue to expand unabated as long as there are few viable alternative income-earning opportunities. Important groundwork was laid on the livelihoods front by officers at the United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs (DESA), who, at the Tripartite Meeting on Social and Labour Issues in Small-Scale Mines in Geneva, 17–21 May 1999, unveiled plans to launch a ‘sustainable livelihoods’ project on ASM in sub-Saharan Africa. Intended as a pilot exercise, the objectives of the US$280,000 project, which commenced 1 January 2000 and concluded 28 March 2003,Footnote 7 were to ‘build synergy between poverty reduction and sustainable livelihoods (in ASM communities)… [and to explore] the linkages between poverty, artisanal mining and sustainable livelihood[s]…in order to identify better entry points for poverty reduction strategies’ (Labonne and Gilman 1999, p. 6).Footnote 8

Shortly after UN officials and commissioned consultants presented DESA project findings at the Seminar on Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in Africa: Identifying Best Practices and Building the Sustainable Livelihoods of Communities in Yaoundé, Cameroon, 19–22 November 2002, the UK Department for International Development (DfID) launched an even more comprehensive two-phase ASM livelihoods project. The purpose of the now-completed Phase I, a £280,308 assignment contracted out to the Centre for Development Studies, University of Swansea, was ‘to understand the challenges faced by the artisanal and small scale mining communities in Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia…and then help to devise policy initiatives to increase the security and well-being of these people’ (DfID 2003, p. 141). The project determined, inter alia, the role played by the sector in rural livelihood strategies, and identified some of the institutional barriers perpetuating community vulnerability. The intention was to provide these data to a UK-based consultancy awarded £479,980 for Phase II, hired ‘to refine and implement a credible artisanal and small scale mining policy framework’ (DfID 2003, p. 141).

The pioneering work of DESA and DfID has galvanized significant corporate interest in this area. As if finally recognizing that illegal artisanal mining activity is not going to go away unless more robust strategies are developed, several large-scale mining companies with operations in sub-Saharan Africa have pledged to address the problem more proactively and humanely. The policy of Barrick Gold Corporation, for example, which now has four major projects in Tanzania, states the following: ‘Barrick recognizes that ASM communities are a key stakeholder group and therefore require a more collaborative approach, focusing not only on how to coexist, but also how to benefit from each others skills and expertise’.Footnote 9 AngloGold Ashanti has adopted a similar policy in this area, its officers claiming that today, ‘consistent with the view that small-scale mining has a legitimate place in the economy and mining sector, AngloGold Ashanti will work with government agencies and communities to ensure that any small-scale mining will take place on land set aside for that purpose, which has the potential to support small-scale mining and, through appropriate regulatory and administrative procedures, to allocate this land to miners in this sector’.Footnote 10

These, and many of the other multinational mining companies operating in sub-Saharan Africa, have launched an array of AL projects which their officers claim will help reduce levels of illegal mining activity. By providing alternative income-earning opportunities, company and government officers are confident of minimizing the number of ‘jobless and underemployed people [who] resort to artisanal mining for subsistence’ (Labonne and Gilman 1999, p. 2), again, typically on large-scale mining concessions. AngloGold Ashanti, for example, reports of having solicited inputs from the Tanzanian Small Industries Development Organization concerning alternative livelihoods for artisanal miners in Geita.Footnote 11 As part of a US$3 million community development program, officers at Anvil Mining, currently the largest copper producer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have identified local business opportunities which they claim are adequate alternative income-earning activities to illegal mining. The company has constructed two permanent market places to support more than 200 local micro-enterprises, established a cooperative gravel venture to provide safe employment for legal artisanal miners, and converted a section of land into a market garden for women.

Despite prevailing patterns of ‘de-agrarianization’ and a preponderance of part-time farmers in the ASM sector whose very presence is owed to agriculture being unable to support their livelihoods on its own, the majority of the ALs being promoted are farming-focused. This raises important questions for research, foremost: to what extent has this approach reduced participation in illegal mining, and are the substitute agrarian activities being promoted sustainable and appealing economically? In order to help bridge this gap, the next section of the article offers some preliminary perspectives from ongoing research aimed at determining the impacts of the efforts being made on this front in Ghana, a country case in the inaugural DESA and DfID livelihood exercises, and the location of a multitude of private sector-funded AL projects. In Ghana, the AL approach has been embraced as a re-agrarianization strategy in ASM communities perhaps more so than any other country in sub-Saharan Africa.

Re-agrarianization in Ghanaian artisanal mining communities

The aim of this section of the article is to provide some initial reflections on the policy of ‘re-agrarianization’ in ASM communities and its flaws. Specifically, research is being undertaken by the authors to gain a better understanding of the extent to which—if at all—these interventions are reducing illegal mining activity in Ghana. Since May 2006, interviews have been conducted with 15 government officers and over 100 artisanal miners based in the Eastern Region, Upper East Region, and Western Region of the country, where illegal artisanal mining (galamsey) activity is most heavily concentrated.

On its mining gateway, under the heading ‘A Case for the Establishment of Alternative Livelihood Project in Mining Communities in Ghana’, the Ghanaian Government indicates that ‘though mining cannot employ every member of a mining community, the activity creates opportunity for the development of other economic activities or Alternative livelihoods… [which makes it necessary] to develop Alternative Livelihood Projects (ALP) otherwise known as Local Economic Development Projects (LED)’.Footnote 12 Several corporate partners have responded positively to the government’s initiative (see Table 2), developing programs which feature fish harvesting; grasscutterFootnote 13 and snail rearing; livestock and poultry farming; and cassava, cocoa, oil palm, pineapple and mushroom cultivation. A number of scholars have since provided critical assessments of these interventions, the general consensus being that they have produced mixed results in the best of cases. Carson et al. (2005), for example, are deeply sceptical about the ability of ALs to discourage ASM. The authors argue that there are ‘strong economic incentives for artisanal miners and peasants to continue their illegal mining’ largely because ‘alternative livelihoods such as farming often have lower and less immediate returns’ (p. 40). A more recent study of the country’s ASM-AL projects undertaken by Hilson and Banchirigah (2009) reinforce these claims. It is argued that the majority of AL activities have proved highly unpopular with target groups because, inter alia, they generate few funds and are generally standalone agricultural projects emphasizing the production of crops whose markets smallholders cannot readily access. None of the miners surveyed as part of Tschakert’s (2009) study in the Dunkwa locality of the Central Region expressed any interest in the snail cultivation, mushroom-farming and grasscutter-rearing activities that comprise the backbone of the majority of AL-ASM projects in Ghana.

Table 2 Selected ‘alternative livelihood’ programs in Ghana’s mining sector
Full size table

The decision to promote agrarian-based activities as alternatives to artisanal mining assumes that the Ghanaian Government and collaborating partners are capable of discouraging rural inhabitants from engaging in the latter which, based on preliminary analysis, does not appear to be the case. Why, then, are these agrarian activities being promoted and marketed as adequate substitutes to ASM? The answer was provided in a recent interview with a government officer in the country capital of Accra, during which it was explained that the country’s PRSPs were used to inform AL-ASM policy.Footnote 14 As is the case with the majority of African PRSPs, the Ghanaian documents champion increased support for smallholders as a panacea to the country’s rural poverty problem, and therefore provide a policy foundation for the AL-ASM programs spreading rapidly in the country’s mining communities today. This is made clear in the country’s initial PRSP, An Agenda for Growth and Prosperity, which argues that ‘Ghana is predominantly an agricultural economy’ and that ‘the change of the archaic, near-subsistence agricultural economy into a progressive, dynamic, entrepreneurial and profitable business will bring about structural change and change to the spatial organization of the rural environment (IMF 2003b, pp. 36–37).

The poor performance of most agrarian-based ALs, therefore, reflects how unrepresentative the PRSP machinery is of the realities on the ground. First, and contrary to claims made by Bryceson (1996, p. 97) that the ‘view that African farmers are strictly self-sufficient, subsistence-based producers has long been discarded’, officers at the Ghanaian Government and support agencies continue to believe that a supported smallholder farming sector is the quickest route out of poverty, despite the evidence that has since emerged which suggests otherwise. Here, however, lies the problem: the decision to pursue ‘re-agrarianization’ as a strategy to combat illegal mining and concurrently alleviate rural poverty not only assumes that the Ghanaian Government is able to transform smallholder farming into a viable income-earning activity, but also that their efforts are capable of re-establishing this sector as a primary industry in areas where another industry—that is, ASM—is the principal economic activity. The former promises to be challenging enough because the country’s smallholder farming sector, despite being the recipient of millions of dollars in technical and education support to date, is mired in a deteriorated state:

About 35 percent of Ghana’s farmers are poor, practicing mixed forms of agriculture that are risk prone and heavily dependent on rainfall. With many farmers hampered by poor infrastructure, marketing systems have remained underdeveloped, locking poorer farmers into subsistence agriculture. Too much dependence on petroleum and other indirect taxes which constitute about 67 percent of tax revenue, is taking its toll on the real incomes of citizens and consequently on purchasing food.Footnote 15

Ghana’s PRSPs argue that a main reason why intensified support for farming constitutes part of the solution to the rural poverty problem is that the majority of the country’s people (90%) rely on such agriculture for their livelihoods. However, at the same time, these documents fail to explain the capacity in which these people depend on the sector. Approximately 70% of Ghanaian farms measure less than three hectares (Chamberlain et al. 2007), small estates that are incapable of producing much beyond a subsistence level. They are also engaged in the harvesting of many crops whose value plummeted between 1980 and 2000 in real terms (Kurwijila 2005). It is therefore likely that the majority of Ghanaians determined to be dependent upon farming for their livelihoods are generating food for their families and not for markets, and rather engage in other non-farm activities for their incomes.

Moreover, access to export markets, a key to increasing levels of disposable incomes, appears unachievable regardless of the level of support provided (after Fold 2008). Although 90% of the country’s agricultural produce may originate from smallholder plots (after Nyanteng and Seini 2000), most is controlled and exported by multinationals such as Lever Brothers, Nordpalm, Dole, Fresh del Monte and Fyffe’s, and, in the case of cocoa, by the Cocoa Marketing Corporation (CMC), a state-controlled organization. Moreover, in cases where smallholders mix with large-scale farmers/exporters, access to marketing channels, such as those for pineapple and cocoa, is largely controlled by traditional leaders. The initial PRSP acknowledges this problem, pointing out how ‘unorganized small farmers come up against well-organized monopolistic marketing channels run by market queens’, at the same time noting, perhaps overzealously, that tax reductions and intensified support to smallholders are sufficient to remove these middlemen (IMF 2003b, p. 80).

Even if the government is able to facilitate improved access to markets, there is the issue of how smallholders can purchase crucial farm inputs such as fertilizers, something which Ghana’s PRSPs overlook. The removal of subsidies on fertilizers and fungicides (Nyanteng and Seini 2000)Footnote 16 has proved extremely burdensome for the country’s smallholders, the sudden rise in costs, coupled with the devaluation of the exchange rate making the acquisition of these vital farm inputs—now sold in dollars and other foreign currencies—difficult. The deterioration of extension and credit services, which began towards the end of the 1980s, has made smallholder farmers’ situation even more precarious:

[The] breakdown in…extension services has hit the smallholder farmer particularly hard. When the service was operating, government emphasis on small farmer production ensured that a certain proportion of inputs, mainly fertilizer, hand tools and seeds, reached the subsistence farmer through the field extension staff…Over the years, some 40 percent of the small farmers in the country have [also] received credit. Credit in Ghana, however, is [now] plagued by high intermediation costs and poor loan recoveries…At present, with lending rates at 26 to 30 percent, few businesses can afford to borrow as financial costs are excessive. [Sarris and Shams 1992, pp. 205–206, 186]

The stabilization programs introduced in the 1980s under the auspices of the World Bank facilitated minimal growth in Ghana’s agricultural sector. The vast majority of subsistence farmers ‘were left to fend for themselves’ and consequently, the sector, which accounted for more than half of the nation’s total value added in 1970, declined to just over 40% in the 1990s.

Second, the PRSP machinery seriously downplays the importance of non-farm activities or diversified income portfolios vis-à-vis farming in rural areas. This policy disconnection is by no means owed to a lack of evidence: over the past 15–20 years, a steady stream of findings have emerged which point to a growing number of rural Ghanaians ‘branching out’ into non-farm activities. Weissman (1990) was among the first to do so, pointing out that a clear pattern of ‘de-agrarianization’ had emerged during the earliest phases of the country’s adjustment program when, following the removal of subsidies, a growing number of small-scale farmers had recognized that they ‘[did] not have much opportunity to avoid or internalize the many risks and uncertainties which they face[d] in production and post-harvest activities’ (Nyanteng and Seini 2000, p. 281). Drawing upon findings from household surveys, Appleton and Collier (1990) offered corroborating evidence, observing, at approximately the same time, that rural households of all strata were, in fact, engaged in myriad income-earning activities apart from farming. Throughout rural Ghana, the motivation for this diversification appears to be couched in the ‘distress-push’ school or, as Jamal (1995, p. 19) puts it, a drive ‘to ensure self-sufficiency for their families’. A testament to the significance of ASM in this context is how, since publication of the country’s first PRSP, it has expanded and today flourishes in the so-called ‘agricultural breadbaskets’ of Ghana, including Dunkwa, Tarkwa, Bibiani, and Obuasi (see Amankwah and Anim-Sackey 2003; Aryee 2003; Aryee et al. 2003; Hilson and Potter 2005; Hilson et al. 2007; Tschakert and Singha 2007).

The country’s rural poverty alleviation policies appear heavily disconnected from these realities. Its PRSPs make few linkages between the deteriorated state of smallholder farming and growth of non-farm activities, particularly ASM. Ghana’s first PRSP, for example, identifies the ‘generation of non-farming employment in rural areas’ as a ‘priority intervention’ (IMF 2003b, p. 29), yet calls for laws on unlicensed ASM, again the country’s most important non-farm activity, to be ‘reviewed and enforced’ (IMF 2003b, p. 74); there is no mentioning anywhere of the growth of ASM being tied to rural well-being. An official ‘division’ between illegal artisanal mining—galamsey—and legal small-scale mining has existed since 1989, following implementation of the Small-Scale Gold Mining Law (PNDCL 219). A distinction continues to be made in policy, the former Minister of Lands, Forestry and Mines recently quoted as saying that ‘galamsey operations cannot be equated to small-scale mining, which is legal and supported in the country’.Footnote 17

Finally, despite the evidence pointing to a growing number of rural farmers ‘branching out’ into ASM to supplement their earnings and the sector being poverty-driven, its activities continue to be associated with the ‘get rich quick’ narrative. The main message conveyed by government officers during the course of several recent interviews was that miners are opportunists who are out to make money; one local government officer even referred to artisanal gold miners as ‘thieves’.Footnote 18 Views such as these taint the sector’s image (Tschakert and Singha 2007), and have contributed to its diminished stature in policy. The government and supporting bodies use data which point to agriculture contributing the largest share to the country’s GDP (38%) as justification for promoting agrarian-based ALs (IMF 2005). Revisiting the arguments made earlier, however, GDP data are not necessarily accurate indicators of well-being, and fail to accurately reflect the economic importance of informal sector activities. This is significant in the case of Ghana, where informal sector activities provide incomes for 81% of the country’s population (Debrah 2007) and where ASM, which employs upward of one million—mainly unlicensed—men, women and children (Banchirigah 2008) produces 250,000 oz gold annually (Yakubu 2002). The majority of this produce is captured by the government, albeit via informal channels.

The findings gathered by the authors thus far suggest that as a strategy to combat illegal mining, the ‘re-agrarianizing’ of de-agrarianized areas through AL programs has had limited effect. As Hilson and Banchirigah (2009), and Tschakert (2009) explain, many of the more vulnerable groups found in ASM camps, such as single women and the elderly, would likely pursue agrarian-based alternatives provided that the activities involved were less arduous than, for example, carrying ore, and if the earnings were comparative. At the same time, however, it is unrealistic to assume that the youth and men, whose lands have been taken out of their hands by large-scale mineral exploration and mining companies, will pursue farm-based alternatives. As a recent analysis by Nyame (2002) confirmed, the main alternatives the youth inhabiting the country’s mining communities, where unemployment rates range between 70 and 90% (Carson et al. 2005), are interested in are carpentry, mechanics and other ‘skills-added’ activities—few of which feature in AL-ASM programs. There is also the issue of how much ‘quick cash’ farm-alternatives can provide, something which one mine manager touched on an interview: ‘we must prove that moving them will get them at least what they are getting as galamsey’Footnote 19—in other words, ensure that these alternative livelihoods are capable of generating equivalent or greater financial returns than, for example, gold panning. This requires, inter alia, subsidizing the crucial farm inputs that rural smallholder farmers can no longer afford, as well as improving their market positions.

Whilst it may seem an obvious recommendation for AL programs to target vulnerable groups, this would require a radical reorientation of rural development policy, which donors and the Ghanaian Government would in all likelihood be reluctant to embrace. It would more importantly require a radical change in mindset concerning ASM: the industry should be viewed as an integral part of rural livelihoods, rather than condemned and portrayed as an industry comprised of people seeking to ‘get rich quick’. Legislation needs to be overhauled to more accurately reflect the realities on the ground, and operators need to be supported. A integral aspect of this is identifying areas suitable for prospective operators. In Ghana, this is something which is ongoing. On 24 October 2008, the government unveiled plans to demarcate 44 areas (a combined area of 480,000 acres) for ASM, the idea being to encourage prospective operators, or those already engaged in illegal activity, to complete an application for a license. This, however, is an exercise that has been conducted outside of mainstream rural poverty alleviation programs. For lasting, meaningful change to take place—specifically, for legalized ASM to be recognized as a livelihood alternative in the same context as smallholder farming—the PRSP committee must revise its strategy and opinions of rural income-earning alternatives. Only then will the view proliferate that formalized ASM is a viable and important alternative livelihood.

Concluding remarks

A poor understanding of the patterns of de-agrarianization unfolding in sub-Saharan Africa has given rise to questionable local economic development initiatives, a case in point being re-agrarianization through ‘alternative livelihoods’, a policy being championed as a solution to the mounting illegal mining problem in the region. Most such projects are rooted in the legacy of the African PRSP, which calls for local economic development to have a ‘small-farm focus’. Consider, again, the case of Ghana, which was examined in this article as a case study:

The majority of Ghana’s working population continues to depend upon farming activities for their livelihood, and typically they cultivate small acreages. It stands to reason therefore that no significant progress can be made in raising the average real incomes of Ghanaians as a whole without significant improvements in the productivity of the small-scale farmer and farm labourer. (IMF 2003b, p. viii)

However, in Ghana and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, rather than supporting smallholder groups in the activities that they have diversified into—likely a reflection of the diminishing popularity of farming as a source of livelihood in the region—there continues to be a misconception among policymakers that with increased support in the form of dug-outs, hand-pump systems and valley bottom schemes, farmers will generate earnings beyond a subsistence level. The concern is that these projects and more broadly speaking, the current policy thrusts of most African PRSPs, do not accurately reflect the realities on the ground, and are therefore unlikely to reduce illegal mining. Policymakers have yet to come to grips with why this activity has surfaced as well as accept that it has overtaken smallholder farming as a primary source of livelihood in many corners of sub-Saharan Africa.

It is against this background that this article has made two important clarifications about rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa for the purposes of strengthening policies both aimed at formalizing and reducing illegal artisanal mining. It has first sought to further the debate on ‘de-agrarianization’ in the region, arguing that many farmers are abandoning unviable agricultural activities in favour of ASM. With its low barriers to entry and minimal capital startup requirements, ASM has become an important source of income for impoverished peasants. The sector has yet to garner significant attention in the mainstream livelihood diversification literature but the evidence suggests that since the implementation of SAPs, it has become an important non-farm income-earning activity in the region, providing supplementary incomes to millions of rural inhabitants. The need for a critical ‘re-think’ of the roles of both smallholder agriculture and ASM in the region is imperative.

Second, the analysis has underscored how deeply rooted an activity ASM has become in rural sub-Saharan Africa. The sector’s rapid, and often chaotic, expansion has become an issue of major concern for donors and many of the region’s governments. Whilst most are in general agreement that people are driven to ASM because of economic hardship, at the same time, they have failed to act accordingly to address the underlying cause of this poverty. This article attributes this hardship—and ultimately, the progressive movement of rural Africans into ASM—to the unviable nature of smallholder farming. Recent initiatives taken by policymakers to ‘re-agrarianize’ rural communities appear to be doing little to discourage illegal mining activity, which suggests that smallholder farming is unviable and no longer able to support rural inhabitants on its own; in addition, ASM has become an indispensable economic activity in large part because there are few viable income-earning alternatives, including farming. Policymakers, who argue that a policy of re-agrarianization is the key to combating the insurgence of illegal artisanal mining, appear unaware of the de-agrarianization unfolding in the region—or, are electing to ignore it.

Whilst certain ‘alternative livelihoods’ may prove popular in the long run, particularly among more vulnerable groups such as women and the elderly, there must some provision in place for supporting artisanal mining: it is unrealistic to assume that a policy of re-agrarianization is capable of enticing experienced small-scale miners with significant industry experience and/or who are earning substantial wages. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, more dynamic solutions are needed if illegal mining is to be controlled. Denying its importance and championing a less-significant activity would be counterproductive. From this analysis, clearly, the most promising way forward is a broad policy mix that emphasizes, inter alia, the demarcation of mineralized plots to support legal activity and the launch of more economically sustainable ‘alternative livelihoods’—agrarian or non-farm—that appeal to the more vulnerable people engaged in arduous mining activity.