To mark International Women’s Day we’re digging into an often overlooked, but critical sector for the global economy, and for many millions of women: Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM).
From gold, cobalt, copper and gemstones to salt, gravel and quarry rock: artisanal and small-scale mining) has played an active role in national development and international trade over the decades. But as the demand for clean energy and for consumer technology grows worldwide, the need for the metals and minerals which are used in everything from smartphones to solar panels to electric vehicle batteries - is skyrocketing.
In this episode of The Development Podcast we get an insight into the lives of women who work in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining. We hear about the dangers they face, efforts to reform conditions and the wider opportunities to build an inclusive future.
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Featured voices
- Dr Rachel Perks, Senior Mining Specialist, World Bank
- Blessing Hungwe-Nharara, Zimbabwe Association of Women in Mining Associations
- Susan Wheeler, Founder of Virtu Gems
Transcript
[00:00] Lindelwa Mtongana: Welcome to The Development Podcast from the World Bank Group. I'm Lindy Mtongana. To mark International Women's Day, we're digging into an often overlooked but critical sector for the global economy and for many millions of women, artisanal and small-scale mining, or ASM. ASM contributes to the livelihoods of over 300 million people worldwide. Now, a third of those people are women. As the demand for clean energy and for consumer technology grows, the need for the metals and minerals which are used in everything from smartphones to solar panels to electric vehicle batteries is also skyrocketing. ASM plays a vital role in meeting that need. But with much of the sector still largely unregulated, what are the challenges facing female miners? And how can women working in ASM get a better deal for the work they do? We'll be talking supply chains with the World Bank.
Dr Rachel Perks: ASM is not going away, and therefore we really have to put a concerted effort into things that have to do with well-being and health and safety.
Lindelwa Mtongana: Hearing from one trailblazing woman in Zimbabwe who is fighting for the rights of millions of female miners.
Blessing Hungwe-Nharara: The work that we're doing to change the lives of women is basically we're trying to empower.
Lindelwa Mtongana: And one business explains why we need to rethink the way the gemstone trade works.
Susan Wheeler: We source gemstones that the mine is owned by a Zambian, an artisanal small-scale mine, cut by a Zambian, and it's being sold by a Zambian.
Lindelwa Mtongana: The Development Podcast from the World Bank Group. The sound of an artisanal mine in Zimbabwe. It's a hub of activity as people, mainly from the local community, work with metal tools to extract precious commodities from the ground. They dig as a generator hums in the background. It is a hive of activity. It is also very hard work. Mines in many countries are often unregulated. Access is hard, and it is typically a long way from an artisanal mine to a hospital or emergency medical care. For women, there are many instances where they are denied access to mines or relegated to working in lower paid jobs. Women can also suffer from harassment and abuse. There are 45 million people globally working directly in ASM, and as we mentioned earlier, there are over 300 million employed indirectly, and that number is growing. In some parts of the world, women make up 18% of the ASM workforce. In others, it's 50%. Women's economic participation overall is transformative for economies. If women were employed at the same rate as men, it's estimated that long-run GDP per capita could be almost 20% higher, fueling prosperity for families and communities. For women in mining, the work can be risky and difficult. It can also be an economic game-changer, providing income and financial security for their households. So how can conditions in mining be improved for women so they can earn a living safely? To find out more, our producer, Sarah, caught up with Dr. Rachel Perks, a senior mining specialist at the Energy and Extractives Global Practice at the World Bank.
[03:25] Sarah Treanor: So for listeners who may not have heard that much about artisanal and small-scale mining before, can you give me an idea of what it means and what kinds of materials, metals, minerals come from these kinds of mining practices?
Dr Rachel Perks: Right. It has a huge spectrum of potential activity, and we've been, in many ways, I think, quibbling over definitions for decades. On the one hand, you could have a small family who is using mining to supplement agriculture in the off-season, maybe three or four people working in a small area. Or you could have relatively small-scale mining organized like you would find in countries like Chile, Peru, Tanzania, where people are working with good health and safety conditions, they're being represented through a cooperative or some kind of mining entity. And there, you could be talking about an operation with upwards of thousands of people. So largely, I think what we associate artisanal and small-scale mining with is a lack of legalization and organization generally. But again, I would say there are very good examples, principally in South America, also parts of Africa, and somewhat in Asia, where people are well organized, mining licenses are held for ground in which they're mining. But typically when the world thinks about ASM, we think about ungoverned spaces, a lot of chaos perhaps happening in these environments, which is not really the case. These are highly organized and disciplined operations, even if they don't have a mining license. But it ranges from everything from the types of minerals that we need for our cell phones and our laptops, to the beautiful diamonds in our engagement rings, to construction materials to build roads and homes in the domestic market. And that's what makes it such, I think, a fascinating area to be involved in, is because there is such diversity in the amount of uses of these materials.
Sarah Treanor: So it's a hugely diverse sector. How many people are employed in ASM? And is that number growing, do we know? And is there a hub for ASM globally?
Dr Rachel Perks: So Sarah, we can speak with a bit more confidence on this because we just finished a massive flagship report looking at artisanal small-scale mining over the decades. And I think what really struck me, as we were digging into the data and the research, is that we've gone from a situation where artisanal small-scale mining in the 1990s was employing maybe 10 to 15 million people globally, and now we're sitting at just under 45 million. And when I say employing, what I mean by that is people who are directly working in the mines, whether they're digging, whether they're washing, etcetera. But now, let's take a step back and talk about all of the what we would call indirect labor that's going in. So those are the people that are possibly transporting minerals out of mine sites, connecting them to capitals where they can be exported out, or perhaps it's people who are providing services into the mines on a range of issues, tool supplies, or maybe food, et cetera. And when we start to look at that number, we're into well over 270 million. So at the end of the day, we're looking at a sector that is directly and indirectly employing well over 310 million people across the globe. When you asked about geographies, it's everywhere, really. We have... The largest shares are in South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific, followed closely by Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, and then Latin South America.
Sarah Treanor: And what are some of the issues facing miners?
Dr Rachel Perks: So whether you're a male or a female, I think the biggest challenges as a miner are health and safety. Again, if we look at some of the best practices, the larger operations in some of the countries that I talked about earlier, we don't see as much of those problems. But the vast majority of people are working with a lack of personal protective gear. They are facing exposure to a number of substances. We talk a lot about mercury. That's only one. We have silica, dust, just having to work in water for long periods of time can affect people, et cetera. And this is really an area where we are getting quite passionate about wanting to mobilize the international community because we are, again, seeing that ASM is not going away, and therefore we really have to put a concerted effort into things that have to do with wellbeing and health and safety. Women's issues are particularly striking, and that ranges everything from not getting paid the same amount for doing the same work. It could be getting relegated to less paying jobs, not because they're not capable, but simply because the mines are typically run by men. And the w orst forms of social protection which we know about, sexual and gender-based violence.
Sarah Treanor: And how does ASM fit into the big trends in technology, for example, the energy transition?
Dr Rachel Perks: Right. So certainly, I think with the energy transition, there's a lot of discussion, obviously, around we need a lot more specific metals coming from certain minerals in order to build clean technology, right? So everything from solar panels to wind turbines to our batteries in our electric vehicles. And certainly, there are a number of minerals that have been traditionally mined artisanally, as well as at a large scale, that are going into these types of clean technologies. And so in some ways, the energy transition, I think, has highlighted the agenda again and the need for us to start thinking about how to better regulate and organize the sector. But everything from cobalt, that is used predominantly in batteries for vehicles, to tin, tungsten, tantalum, which are a lot of the conductors that go into our cell phones, of course, the issue is that these minerals are mined in certain locations, they exit raw, unmanufactured out of a lot of these countries, and then get further manufactured, transformed, smelted in other countries, and then end up in a lot of our industrialized countries as parts, right? And so one of the key challenges, especially for leading listed companies, is to know the provenance of a lot of the materials that are going into their end products.
[11:13] Lindelwa Mtongana: The challenges facing artisanal and small-scale miners, whatever metals and minerals they're mining, share common threads: health and safety risks and gender disparities. But in many regions, miners are coming together to address these issues collectively. Let's head to Zimbabwe to hear the story of one trailblazing woman leading the way when it comes to strengthening networks and improving conditions for communities. Producer Sarah found out more.
Sarah Treanor: These are the sounds of a small-scale mine in Zimbabwe. It's a gold mine. Workers shovel earth into the machinery, and water pours out the other side. It's effectively mechanized panning. This operation is owned by one female miner who has made her voice heard internationally and become a powerful advocate for women in the industry.
Blessing Hungwe-Nharara: Hello, my name is Blessing Hungwe. I'm actually speaking to you from a small-scale mining site of mine, which is in Mashonaland West Province of Zimbabwe.
Sarah Treanor: Blessing told me a bit more about her background and her introduction to gold mining as a child.
Blessing Hungwe-Nharara: I grew up with a grandmother when my mom used to work in town, and I grew up with a grandmother who was a farmer at the rural area. During weekends, my grandmother would go with me to the rivers and would try and pan gold. But my passion for mining gold grew when I was in high school. My uncles, my mom's brothers were artisanal small-scale miners, would go underground and bring ore. So they would pound their ore and recover their gold, but they would leave the residue from the ores. So I would pan those residues and make quite a lot of pocket money from it. This is where I come from. This is me.
Sarah Treanor: Mining has become something Blessing's whole family has become involved in. She even met her current husband through mining. And they've all got opinions on how it can be done better, something which causes debates around the family dinner table.
Blessing Hungwe-Nharara: I had my first son when I was 20. After I had my sons, then I got divorced. I then raised my sons as a single mom. So I've raised four boys. You'd be surprised. My first son is a mining engineer, and my second son is an artisanal small-scale miner, a very hardworking one who produces so much. So I love it in my house when we are all arguing about a project and the mining engineer is saying, "No, we have to do it this way," and the artisanal small-scale miner is saying, "No, no, no, let's just do it quickly like this, like that, and make it." So it's a dynamic family.
Sarah Treanor: Blessing has clearly been hugely successful and is passionate about her work, but she tells me about some of the entrenched issues that still face women in mining.
Blessing Hungwe-Nharara: Mercury is still a very big challenge in the ASM sector. We haven't really found an alternative of mercury. Because of that, lots of women are still using mercury. So all the challenges related with mercury, women are still facing them. And there's harassment with the male... Because it's a male dominated industry, and there's still the stigma. The stigma is still there. There's bureaucracy as well in terms of the titles, in terms of mining titles. You can get a mining title together, and there's a male counterpart who wants the same title, they can just override you. And access to finance is still a very big challenge with women. And also balancing home. You have to look after the children at home, you have to be cooking, you have to be doing everything at home. The work that we're doing to change the lives of women is basically we're trying to empower women.
Sarah Treanor: Blessing has worked with several ASM-led projects of the World Bank. She's the Delve Exchange Coordinator for West and Southern Africa. That's an initiative started by the World Bank during COVID-19. It's an online network facilitating knowledge sharing and support between ASM associations, ASM communities, and quarry workers.
Blessing Hungwe-Nharara: The solidarity and networking that we are doing in Delve Exchange makes it very, very unique, making miners believe their challenges can be addressed. The platform here, we hear, share, and learn from each other, which is a very unique thing that Delve Exchange is doing. And it also gives hope. It is for miners, by miners, which is very unique and very important.
Sarah Treanor: She is also part of the Zimbabwe Women in Mining Association. She's proud to be leading the way for other women in ASM.
Blessing Hungwe-Nharara: When I was about 24, 25, that is when I actually formalized my first operation by registering it and trying to mine formally. I started reinvesting the little proceeds that I would get back into my business by buying generator, by buying compressor, machinery that I needed for the business. So my business actually started booming a bit, and many other women really wanted to see what I was doing and learn from what I was doing. That is when I remember starting to be a leader of a mining association from my district that was in Guruve. I was then a leader of a mining association from my province. Then I was then a leader of the National Mining Association. Then I was part of the leaders who gathered together to form Africa Women in Mining Association. We then formed also Southern Africa Women in Mining Association. That is SADAC. So yes, that is part of my journey.
Sarah Treanor: But she's not stopping at that, and she explains that she wants to do more in terms of mitigating the environmental impact of mining in her local area.
Blessing Hungwe-Nharara: I actually then said I would want to start a rehabilitation project and close up all the pits around my mine site and plant avocado trees. Later on, I can process the avocados and export. And I got a grant to do rehabilitation on the mine site and do avocado, and it has turned out be a very lovely project. Lots of people actually have asked to come to my mine site to see the avocado project that I've done to rehabilitate.
[18:33] Lindelwa Mtongana: Thank you to Blessing. What an incredible role model and a story of success. Blessing in Zimbabwe is a gold miner, but what about gemstones? Gemstones are an important part of ASM and have a complex supply chain. Well, Rachel Perks from the World Bank told us about the global journey of a gemstone.
Dr Rachel Perks: Let's think about something that probably you and I love a lot, which would be jewelry. So gemstones, again, a situation where you might have gemstones that are being produced in countries such as Zambia, or Tanzania, or Kenya, and those gemstones typically would be leaving the country uncut, unpolished, ending up in some of the most wonderful places for cutting and polishing, let's say India, Dubai, if we're talking about diamonds, then it would be principally Belgium, getting finished in these countries, and then sold to jewelers along the way all over the world, right? So it's really quite fascinating to think how a small little gemstone ends up traveling many places of the world before ending up in a finished consumer product.
Sarah Treanor: And where have you seen good practice in terms of government but also the private sector?
Dr Rachel Perks: So Tanzania, by far one of the most well-organized small-scale mining sectors. They have done everything well as a government in terms of legislation, in terms of permitting, and in terms of the mine site standards that they apply. It has been, in my mind, one of the leaders on the African continent when it comes to these issues. Chile, this is an incredible example of a government-owned agency called ENAMI, which basically provides a whole range of services to small-scale miners, helping them to reach the international markets through buying relationships, through financing, but also through self-organization. Another wonderful example of best practice when it comes to gemstones would be GemFairs. This is an incredible initiative that De Beers actually pioneered itself, where they have been running a really good program to professionalize and develop diamond miners in Sierra Leone. And again, just very small initiatives that have been committed over a long period of time to making things better. And the impact then has been so profound because of the high levels of commitment, whether it's from government or from private sector.
[21:23] Lindelwa Mtongana: Well, building markets that create more wealth in-country for female miners and the government is at the heart of one woman's mission.
Susan Wheeler: Hi, I'm Susan Wheeler. I am a jewelry designer first, and then I made a transition into also focusing on my career work in sustainability and responsibility in the jewelry industry. I now have a nonprofit, The Responsible Jewelry Transformative, as well as my jewelry business. And I'm partners with Virtu Gem, which is a social enterprise that began during COVID and began underneath the nonprofit work of Responsible Jewelry Transformative.
Sarah Treanor: Susan explained to me how, as a jewelry designer, she saw a glaring problem in need of a solution when it came to supply chains.
Susan Wheeler: So at Virtu Gem, we source gemstones that are mined, cut, and owned by people within the source country. So for instance, in Zambia, we source gemstones that the mine is owned by a Zambian, an artisanal small-scale mine, cut by a Zambian, and it's being sold by a Zambian. And all of that requires all the legal processes of it being a legal mine, or we talk about the mine standards in a lot of these mines and work with the mines, and then the cutting. And so that's... And the same for right now. We're in Kenya, Malawi, and in Zambia where we've been working for three or four years now. So in Kenya, the same thing. The mine has to be owned by a Kenyan, the gem is cut by a Kenyan and sold by a Kenyan. It's just the way that we believe in, in only sourcing from artisanal small-scale miners. But in each country, if the trade is more developed, if the cutting skills are more developed, if they're used to already selling, in some ways, directly to the jewelry industry, the revenue coming from that country and going back into that country tends to be much higher than a country that doesn't have the skills for the value addition of cutting, or doesn't have that ability to have an easy way to help create those avenues of market access.
Sarah Treanor: Susan has worked on several innovative initiatives, including one during COVID where she supported miners who'd found themselves effectively cut off from global markets due to the pandemic. She them digitize sales of the gems in-country rather than relying on them being sent abroad to be cut, polished, graded, sold.
Susan Wheeler: There was such a lack of transparency about what even the requirements were for standards in the jewelry industry for the gemstone cutters. And also, there's a lack of transparency about what the value of that gemstone is. Having a gemstone change hands so many times, there's people profiting the whole way along, but it may not be the person who mined that gem, or even who cut it, who are able to profit. This isn't rocket science that people don't understand. It's just they didn't have the... The market knowledge wasn't shared to them that these are our requirements. That's a pretty simple thing to share with people. The other thing is not understanding the price and the value of your gemstone, and that's an important thing to understand as well.
Sarah Treanor: Tell me about some of the work you do with women, specifically, in gemstone mining.
Susan Wheeler: Many of the women that we work with and our leaders, such as Pauline Mundia in Zambia is the lead in our Zambia project there at Virtu Gem. And Pauline is a leader in women and mining. And when we were doing mine site training, she would join conversations where there were mines owned by men and talk about how you can bring women into the mines and where women benefit the mines. So we did and continue to do a lot of gender education to people in artisanal and small-scale mining on how women can benefit.
Sarah Treanor: Let's hear a quick snippet from Pauline, who explains how they worked alongside the World Bank and created a unique gemstone cut, the eagle cut.
Pauline Mundia: For the first time, with the help of the World Bank Project, Zambia was able to come up with, for the first time, their own gem cut which is branded Zambia, the eagle cut. That eagle cut was actually launched by the republican vice president. It was an amethyst.
Sarah Treanor: So what do you want to see, Susan, in terms of changes to hurdles and challenges in the sector?
Susan Wheeler: Market access and a fair price for what they're mining. There's governments creating space, legal space. Support for artisanal and small-scale miners is very important. Artisanal small-scale mining is illegal in many countries throughout the world still, and then that really doesn't leave the individual a safe way to earn a livelihood from artisanal small-scale mining.
[26:37] Lindelwa Mtongana: Thank you, Susan. ASM is a sector with hugely differing impacts, issues, and opportunities. It spans legal, well-run, regulated binding operations employing many, to illegal operations run by a small family or community, and of course, everything in between. Here's Rachel Perks once more on what the World Bank is doing to improve the lives of miners and create a sustainable value chain for all.
Dr Rachel Perks: We want the energy transition. We want more clean energy opportunities. But at the same time, we're now coming to realize the demand that places on the mining industry to provide materials, right? Where I think we've done well, both as an institution, but as a unit in particular, is very early on starting to think about these issues in what we called climate smart mining, and also moving that towards also the question of forest smart mining. One of the simplest fixes that I'm really passionate about moving forward is diesel. ASM operations run on diesel 24/7. There's very little penetration of PV solar technology in a lot of sites. We could be doing a lot more just to reduce some of the emissions out of that alone. There's a lot of waste that happens, and particularly with artisanal small-scale mining, because they aren't efficient practices. So there are a lot of, for lack of a better word, piles of unprocessed material that in fact has a lot of potential in it. So reprocessing, which we may consider that recycling in some ways, but not quite at the same level. There's a lot that we can be doing. There's a lot that we could be doing also just on reforestation. So helping communities to reforest after operations have left. We're experimenting with that in the case of Ghana, where we're working with the Ministry of Mines, rehabilitating, repurposing small-scale mining sites. Where I think we're seeing a lot more push for visibility and for collaboration is with the private sector, because these are the companies that are facing, day in, day out, potential conflicts, perhaps even violent altercations with small-scale miners around the perimeters of their concessions. And I have been overwhelmed over the last year, the amount of private sector, large-scale mining companies that are approaching us to say, "Let's do something together. We need to get the government at the table, we need to get our companies at the table, we need to get civil society at the table, small-scale miners, and we'd like the World Bank to help us to do that."
Lindelwa Mtongana: Very many thanks for listening to this episode of The Development Podcast. Please get in touch with any thoughts. We'll be back again next month. And do have a look at our back catalog for more episodes. Like, subscribe, and rate us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks again for listening.
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