The Minister of Energy, Mines and Quarries, Simon Pierre Boussim, officially opened Artisanal Miners’ Day (Journée de l’Artisan Minier – JAM) on Friday 21 July 2023 in Gaoua. During the opening ceremony, speeches focused mainly on formalising the sector to meet the challenges of artisanal gold mining.
The amphitheatre at ENEP in Gaoua was packed to the rafters on 21 July. They were mining players, administrative authorities and traditional chiefs who had come from all over Burkina Faso to honour this Artisanal Miners’ Day with their presence. According to the Chairman of the National Organising Committee, Jean Baptiste Kaboré, the theme chosen is in line with the government’s vision, which is to clean up the artisanal mining sector through better structuring of the players with a view to reducing its negative impact and ensuring a better contribution to the local and national economy.
He explained that, over the two days of the JAM, specialists in the sector would be talking about sustainable artisanal mining and conflict prevention between industrial mining companies and artisanal miners.
“The formalisation of artisanal mining is one of the priorities of the current transition. It is even necessary in order to achieve one of the strategic objectives of Axis 4 (“Boosting sectors that create jobs and boost the economy”) of the Action Plan for Stabilisation and Development“. This plan aims to “Develop a competitive industrial and craft sector, with high added value and creating decent jobs”, declared the president of the transition Ibrahim Traoré in his speech read by the minister Simon-Pierre Boussim.
According to the President of the Transition, artisanal mining sites will have to be covered by artisanal mining authorisations (autorisations d’exploitation artisanale – AEA), accompanied by mining conventions. “The mining sector reforms undertaken by my government are aimed not only at attracting and securing national and foreign investment, and improving geological and mining knowledge, but also at increasing the sector’s contribution to the country’s economic and social development, in view of the resources generated”, he said.
In his speech, Sékou Barro, representative of the artisanal miners, listed the main problems facing the sector. These include poor supervision and organisation of the sector, and the lack of formalisation of the players.
Agreeing with the artisanal miners’ representative, the governor of the south-west region, Boureima Savadogo, also mentioned the challenges facing artisanal mining. These include controlling human flows, organising artisanal miners, organising and formalising the management of artisanal mining sites, pacifying relations between operators and local populations, and controlling and formalising gold marketing channels.
The sponsor of the ceremony, Bifaté Il, Chief of the Gaoua canton, took the opportunity to thank the defence and security forces for their work in securing the territory. He went on to congratulate the artisanal miners for their contribution to the economy of the region and the country, and encouraged them to continue in the same vein as their war effort, which amounts to more than 165 million FCFA.
The theme of the second edition of Artisanal Miners’ Day is Artisanal mining: what mechanisms are needed to formalise operators in order to improve the socio-economic impact of the sector?
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