Boké (prefecture)

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Location of the city and prefecture of Boké in Guinea
Railway with bauxite from Sangarédi

Boké is a prefecture in the Boké region in Guinea with about 289,000 inhabitants. Like all Guinean prefectures, it is named after its capital, Boké , which is also the capital of the entire region.

The prefecture is located in the west of the country, on the Atlantic coast and the border with Guinea-Bissau , and covers an area of ​​10,053 km².

economy

In 1973, Guinea's first bauxite mine was opened in Sangarédi, which supplied very high-quality raw material that was transported by rail to Kamsar and shipped there. In 1997 the output of this mine was 13 million tons, since then it has decreased continuously and in 2019 was still 8 million tons. The state-owned Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) is 49 percent and the Halco Mining Consortium is 51 percent involved in the mining. Since there are large deposits of bauxite in the prefecture, further mines were developed from 2015 onwards with a World Bank loan of 722 million dollars to the CBG and opened by foreign mining companies.

The local population, on the other hand, was only able to benefit to a limited extent from bauxite mining through jobs and partial compensation for affected landowners and, in return, had to accept loss of land, increasing environmental pollution and decreasing quality of life. From 2015 onwards, there was resistance, protests and riots in the prefecture because of the beginning of the major project. The village of Hamdallaye, which has not received any compensation and is to be relocated, has filed a lawsuit against the World Bank with the organization Inclusive Development International.

In 2018, the mining company La Société Minière de Boké (SMB) employed 7,600 people, including 274 women. In the same year, the Russian company Rusal opened its second mine in Dian-Dian, which has a potential of 564 million tons of bauxite.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ bevölkerungsstatistik.de (2006)
  2. ↑ https://ejatlas.org/conflict/bauxite-mining-boke-guinea
  3. ↑ https://www.mindat.org/loc-20894.html
  4. ^ Rolf Hofmeier: Africa Yearbook 1997: Politics, Economy and Society in Africa south of the Sahara , Institute for African Studies, Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-32291-422-4 , p. 118
  5. ↑ Guinea: New clashes erupt in Boke bauxite mining center , africatimes AT September 13, 2017
  6. ^ Guinea: Boké Bauxite Mine and Infrastructure Project , African Development Bank Group
  7. ^ What Do We Get Out of It? The Human Rights Impact of Bauxite Mining in Guinea , hrw October 4, 2018
  8. ^ Benjamin Moscovici: A village is suing the World Bank , July 6, 2019, website deutschlandfunk.de
  9. ↑ Guinea: Booming bauxite mining is life-threatening - profits not at the expense of residents , October 4, 2018, website hrw.org
  10. ↑ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rusal-guinea-bauxite/rusal-starts-shipping-bauxite-from-guineas-dian-dian-mine-idUSKBN1JF1UB Rusal starts shipping bauxite from Guinea's Dian-Dian mine , Reuters, June 19, 2018