Guinea Conakry and Burkina Faso: Innovations at the Periphery

Struggles over value: corporate–state suppression of locally led mining mechanisation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

“…This article for instance does not address how ASM mechanisation is altering social and labour relations, and there remains plenty of scope and need to investigate these dynamics further (Verbrugge and Geenen 2020). Recent research from South Kivu and elsewhere, for example, has suggested that women and unskilled workers at the bottom of the ASM labour hierarchy have been the most negatively affected by mechanization and the introduction of new technologies (Mulonda et al 2019;Lanzano 2020;Verbrugge 2020;Libassi 2020). Rather, the focus of this article has been to draw attention to the scope for domestically-led processes of capital formation and mechanisation, and how these can be purposefully suppressed by powerful GVC actors.…”

Class formation and capital accumulation in the countryside: Artisanal and small‐scale gold mining in South Kivu, DR Congo

“…Further research is needed to determine if similar findings are replicated elsewhere and, as a result, to what extent they speak to a more generalizable development and accumulation dynamic centred around African ASM (and how this interacts with and is affected by the presence of large‐scale and generally TNC‐led industrial mining). To the extent that similar ASM mechanization processes are taking place—as recent research from across the global South appears to suggest is the case (Lanzano, 2020; Libassi, 2020; Verbrugge, 2020)—the altered distributional patterns associated with ASM mechanization will also merit greater attention. Supporting and nurturing the development of a domestically led ASM sector to eventually access deeper and more technologically complex deposits will be wrought with its own tensions and contradictions, inevitably creating winners and losers in the uneven and contingent process of (capitalist) economic development.…”

“…Supporting and nurturing the development of a domestically led ASM sector to eventually access deeper and more technologically complex deposits will be wrought with its own tensions and contradictions, inevitably creating winners and losers in the uneven and contingent process of (capitalist) economic development. Initial research from South Kivu (Mulonda et al, 2019) and Guinea-Conakry and Burkina Faso (Lanzano, 2020) has suggested that women and unskilled workers at the bottom of the ASM labour hierarchy have been the most negatively affected by mechanization and the introduction of new technologies.…”

Who owns the mud? Valuable leftovers, sociotechnical innovation and changing relations of production in artisanal gold mining (Burkina Faso)

“…This last step of the production chain has become increasingly central in the creation of value from gold ore in the mining sites that we have observed. As we will see, stakes related to cyanide-based processing became more F I G U R E 2 Rinsing the tapis (southwestern Burkina Faso, 2015, photo by C. Lanzano) sensitive, in the mid-2010s, along with the diffusion and generalization of that processing technique (see also Karkare, 2020;Lanzano, 2020;Ouédraogo, 2020). Conflicting claims over the ownership of the piles of mud-or the profit made through their sale-have thus created controversy in many cases, determining a reconfiguration in relations of production and arrangements between the different actors of the chain, and the deployment of multiple strategies to cope with these changes.…”