Mining and Social Transformation in Africa

After more than three decades of economic malaise, many African countries are experiencing an upsurge in their economic fortunes linked to the booming international market for minerals. Spurred by the shrinking viability of peasant agriculture, rural dwellers have been engaged in a massive search for alternative livelihoods, one of the most lucrative being artisanal mining.

While an expanding literature has documented the economic upsurge of artisanal mining, this book is the first to explore its societal impact in detail. It demonstrates that, as a mode of mineral production, artisanal mining has the potential to be far more democratic and emancipating than preceding modes.

This book explores the paradoxes of this mode of mineral production alongside the expansion of large-scale mining investment in Africa, focussing on the Tanzanian experience. It considers how artisanal mining is configured in relation to local, regional and national mining investments, wealth accumulation and social class differentiation emanating from it. It focuses on work lives, mobility, and associated lifestyles of miners and people in mining settlements, asking where this historical interlude is taking them, their communities and countries in the future. The question of value transfers out of the artisanal mining sector, value capture by elites and changing configurations of gender, age and class differentiation, all arise.