Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Complexities Around Formalising Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM)

Over 225 million people are directly and indirectly involved in the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector’s labour value chain across Latin America, South America, Africa, and Asia (World Bank 2024). According to the World Bank, the total workforce in the ASM sector was estimated at 44 million in 2020 (World Bank 2020). This number of workers exceeds the total number of employees in the formal mining industry, which amounts to 7 million (ILO 2019).

Most often, ASM activities that occur without a mining permit are considered illegal and criminalised. Additionally, ASM is associated with several social ills, such as issues related to miners’ health and safety, environmental degradation, child labour, and the occurrence of violence and conflict within the sector. For this reason, formalising the sector is often proposed as a solution to these issues. However, the practical implementation of formalisation policies frequently encounters significant obstacles, leading to recurrent failures of formalisation.

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) in South Africa recently released the draft Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining policy for implementation in March 2022. The announcement of this policy is the first step in formalising the artisanal mining sector in South Africa. Yet, formalisation strategies often fail in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of Africa.

This presentation, which draws on a chapter in my book, delves into the concept of formalisation within the ASM sector, providing an overview and analysis of South Africa’s government-led formalisation process. The presentation also examines the formalisation efforts in Ghana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to draw valuable lessons. Finally, the presentation puts forward the implications of formalisation for women in artisanal mining, a topic often overlooked in broader discussions on formalisation.