Panel 72: Gold Mining in Africa; Distribution of Benefits and Burdens

The panel focuses on distributional arrangements between different actors (foreign companies, host countries, local communities, artisanal miners, female traders etc.) involved in gold mining in Africa. Two subjects are key for assessing terms of engagements in tangible social situations in and around mining sites; the distribution of
1) land and 2) financial benefits.

1) Identities of ‘stakeholders’ are often defined by claims in land: on whose homeland, country, ancestral land, agricultural fields, village territory, or concession does mining take place? Debates focus on spatial divisions and overlap. Panelists are invited to provide cases detailing processes of access to land for mining: who sets the terms of ownership, what is the status of ‘autochthonous/firstcomers’, how do technological differences in scales of operation affect issues of land access? How are bearers of benefits and burden identified in terms of land; as autochthones, locals, citizens, or holders of land titles?

2) Neoliberal ideology, exemplified e.g. in World Bank policy, brings along a rhetoric of redistribution: mining companies are allowed to take, on condition that they share and redistribute. What should the system of taxation be, how should companies compensate communities and what role do they play in development? Redistribution also characterizes the organization of artisanal miners, where traders are prominent lenders to miners until spoils can be divided.

Panelists are invited to analyse interactions between actors involved in mining in terms of systems of debt, exchange and paying taxes. How do distributions of benefits and burdens play out, and who sets the terms?