Land of Gold

International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement, 2016

The loss of the oil economy from South Sudan, which became independent in 2011, together with the global decline in oil prices, plunged Sudan into a dramatic economic crisis. The concomitant increase in the prices of ore, particularly gold, in the 2000s led to a renewed interest on the part of the Khartoum regime in mining. This article details the strategies deployed by the Sudanese government to turn mining activities into a lifeline, especially by encouraging the development of industrial production and reorganizing the gold trade sector. So as to highlight the implications of these new economic policies for the State and society relationships and power agency, as well as relationships between the different regions of the country, my study also analyzes how economic players have handled new opportunities and constraints created. It is based on fieldwork conducted in Khartoum

Forging two nations. Insights on Sudan and South Sudan, edited by Elke Grawert. Addis Ababa and Bonn: OSSREA and BICC, 112-126., 2013

Sudan is a vast country of approximately 2.5 million km2 making it the largest country in Africa and the eleventh among the other world countries. This wide area has made the Sudan a country of varied ecologies and natural resources. Sudan includes nine territories that subdivided into 26 states. It is predominately rural and sparsely populated with a population of about 40.2 millions (July 2005; PRP, 2005). The climate in Sudan ranges from deserts in the north to tropical rainforests in the south. Agriculture is the mainstay of Sudan’s economy, contributing approximately 43% to the GDP and employing more than 80% of the working population. Most farms remain rain-fed and susceptible to drought. The most important mineral resources in Sudan are gold, silver, iron, base metals, salt, gypsum, marble and the recent discoveries of oil and natural gas, which have changed the energy sector and the economy of Sudan.

Changes in the gold mining in Eastern Congo (DRC) exposes artisanal mining to comparable levels of exploitation even while most major militias no longer exist but have been replaced by governmental security and military forces.

2016

In West Africa, large social movements against mining are so far relatively absent from the protest scene. In contrast, a major point in conflict is the competition for gold between artisanal and small-scale miners and large-scale mining companies (e.g. Engels forthcoming, Okoh 2014), in particular in countries with a long tra-dition of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and a newly-emerging industrial mining economy. Artisanal and small-scale mining refers to the “labor-intensive, low-tech mineral exploration and processing” of gold (Hilson 2011, pp. 1032). In this paper, I aim to identify how the livelihood activities of artisanal and small-scale mining shape conflict over large-scale mining.

The International Spectator

2013

Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction, 2010