Komabangou

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Location of Komabangou in Niger

Komabangou (also: Komabangou Site , Koma Bangou , Kombabangou , Komba Bangou ) is a mining settlement in the rural community of Kokorou in Niger . It emerged at the turn of the 20th to the 21st century with the influx of gold prospectors and at times had up to 50,000 inhabitants.

geography

The place name Komabangou means " basin with red clay ". The settlement is located about 18 kilometers southeast of Kokorou, the capital of the rural municipality of the same name, which belongs to the Téra department in the Tillabéri region. Bandio in the south, around 20 kilometers away, is one of the larger villages in the wider area of ​​Komabangou . The capital Niamey is about 120 kilometers further to the southeast. Komabangou is part of the Sahel region . Temperatures can reach 45 ° C during the day.

Emergence

The State Mines Office National des Ressources Minières discovered gold in the Komabangou area in 1985 . The yield was estimated at 15 to 200 grams of gold per ton of rock for a total of 12.5 tons of gold. The discovery attracted a first wave of prospectors. The Canadian company Etruscan Resources received a concession from the Niger government in May 1994 and carried out a feasibility study which showed that exploitation was not economically viable for the company. Despite the ongoing concession from Etruscan Resources , Komabangou was then permanently taken over by gold prospectors from Niger and other West African countries.

The mining settlement Komabangou was established in 1999 and initially had less than 200 inhabitants. In the 2001 census, Komabangou officially recorded 18,679 residents in 2,788 households. 53% of them were men. Estimates for the height of the gold rush were around 50,000 residents. In 2001 the Nigerien Mining Ministry assumed that 100,000 people in the region lived directly or indirectly from gold mining in Komabangou. In the same year, there were an estimated 4,000 mine shafts in the settlement area.

Health and social situation

The gold extraction was initially carried out completely without government control. Accordingly, there was no prescribed separation between residential, dismantling and processing zones. In May 2000, at least three people died in a shaft collapse. The Mining Ministry announced for the first time in 2001 that it would take care of the award of renewable concessions, compliance with safety standards and control of sales. Not least because of the lack of alternatives on the labor market, the government's plans were not implemented strictly.

Controversial gold extraction techniques such as the cyanide process continued to pollute surface waters and groundwater . The cyanide process had direct negative consequences for the health of the population. In addition to soil contamination from the chemicals used for gold extraction, excessive deforestation caused damage to vegetation and, subsequently, to wildlife.

Around 100 children and adolescents between the ages of ten and sixteen were employed in the Komabangou gold industry in 2005, a violation of national legislation on child labor in mining that went unpunished. Her work included both mining in the tunnels and crushing the rock material and collecting water for sieving the crushed rock. The primary school in the settlement, built in 2002, was attended by 140 children in 2005. In 2011 at least 257 eight to sixteen year olds were working illegally in the Komabangou mines. Typical illnesses of the young workers were respiratory diseases as a result of their work, malaria , tuberculosis and HIV infections. The development aid organization World Vision has been active in Komabangou since 2007 and carries out projects on the health, hygiene, nutrition and schooling of children.

More than half of the prostitutes in Komabangou in 2005 were infected with HIV. The infection rate was twice as high as in the major cities of Niamey, Tahoua and Zinder . Like the mining town of Arlit in the north of the country, Komabangou has developed into a center of illicit drug use . Niger is traditionally more of a transit country for drug trafficking . Narcotics cocktails administered to the workers were designed to ensure their efficiency in the pits.

Almost two thirds of the immigrants came from the department of Téra itself, more than half of them from the densely populated rural community of Dargol . Around a fifth had moved from other departments of Niger. The remainder were made up by foreign immigrants, particularly from Benin , Burkina Faso , Nigeria , Togo and Ghana . For the population in the region, who traditionally live from agriculture and animal husbandry, the mining settlement brought with it a profound socio-cultural change, which was expressed not least in increased monetization . The trade in everyday goods and tools for gold mining was mainly carried out by businessmen from the cities of Niamey and Lomé . A secondary conflict arose between the traditional rulers (chefs traditionnels) of Kokorou and Dargol, who both made claims on the economically interesting area of ​​Komabangou.

End of the boom

A basic infrastructure had been built in Komabangou over the years. In addition to a school, a health center and a pharmacy were built. Residential houses made of solid building materials increasingly joined the simple adobe houses and huts.

The company Etruscan Resources returned to the region and participated in the 2004 Samira industrial gold mine not far from Komabangou. The discovery of ever new gold deposits in the region meant that the influx to Komabangou subsided. At the same time, many prospectors left the settlement in the direction of the new discovery sites, albeit often without completely giving up their pits in Komabangou. At the 2012 census, the population of Komabangou was only 9,408 in 1,635 households, with a male share of 61%. The discovery of a single gold flake on the nearby Bourka Bourka hill in 2014 attracted thousands of prospectors who turned their backs on Komabangou.

literature

  • Amadou Abdoul Razack: Propositions pour l'optimisation de la mine artisanale au Niger. Proposals for optimizing artisanal mining in Niger . In: Pangea . No. 37/38 , 2002, pp. 7–23 ( hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr [PDF]).
  • Gavin Hilson, Abigail Hilson, Roy Maconachie, James Mcquilken, Halima Goumandakoye: Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in sub-Saharan Africa: Re-conceptualizing formalization and 'illegal' activity . In: Geoforum . Vol. 83, July 2017, p. 80–90 , doi : 10.1016 / j.geoforum.2017.05.004 .
  • Gavin Hilson, Halima Goumandakoye, Penda Diallo: Formalizing artisanal mining 'spaces' in rural sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Niger . In: Land Use Policy . Vol. 80, pp. 259–268 , doi : 10.1016 / j.landusepol.2018.09.023 .
  • Abdourahamane Tankari Dan-Badjo, Didier Adamou Tidjani, Tahar Idder, Yadji Guero, Nomaou Dan Lamso, Ali Matsallabi, Jean Marie Karimou Ambouta, Cyril Feidt, Thibault Sterckeman, Guillaume Echevarria: Diagnostic de la contamination des eaux par les éléments déléments déléments métalliques métalliques zone aurifère de Komabangou - Tillabéri, Niger . In: International Journal of Biological and Chemical Sciences . Vol. 8, No. 6 , August 5, 2015, p. 2849-2857 ( ajol.info ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lindsay Rust: Komabangou: Gold Rush In the Desert. Dancing Drum, accessed October 28, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b National Repertoire des Localités (ReNaLoc). (RAR) Institut National de la Statistique de la République du Niger, July 2014, p. 508 , accessed on 7 August 2015 (French).
  3. ↑ a b c d e Rory MacLean: A journey across 10 years and four continents: Danziger's tales from Niger. In: The Guardian . September 27, 2015, accessed October 21, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Abdourahmane Idrissa, Samuel Decalo: Historical Dictionary of Niger . 4th edition. Scarecrow, Plymouth 2012, ISBN 0-7864-0495-7 , pp. 396 .
  5. ↑ a b Issa Abdou Yonlihinza: Transports et dans la désenclavement problématique du développement local à Téra au Niger . Thèse de doctorat. Université Toulouse 2 Le Mirail, Toulouse 2011, p. 162 and 164 ( tel.archives-ouvertes.fr [PDF; accessed October 29, 2018]).
  6. ↑ a b c Issa Abdou Yonlihinza: Mines - Niger: jusqu'où la ruée vers l'eldorado minéral? In: Le Point Afrique. May 16, 2017, accessed October 28, 2018 (French).
  7. ^ Répertoire National des Communes (RENACOM). (RAR file) (No longer available online.) Institut National de la Statistique, archived from the original on January 9, 2017 ; Retrieved November 8, 2010 (French). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stat-niger.org
  8. ↑ a b Le gouvernement nigérien décide de réorganiser l'orpaillage. Panapress, October 16, 2001, accessed October 28, 2018 .
  9. ^ A b Amadou Abdoul Razack: Propositions pour l'optimisation de la mine artisanale au Niger. Proposals for optimizing artisanal mining in Niger . In: Pangea . No. 37/38 , 2002, pp. 13–14 ( hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr [PDF; accessed October 29, 2018]).
  10. ↑ Abdourahamane Tankari Dan-Badjo, Didier Adamou Tidjani, Tahar Idder, Yadji Guero, Nomaou Dan Lamso, Ali Matsallabi, Jean Marie Karimou Ambouta, Cyril Feidt, Thibault Sterckeman, Guillaume Echevarria: Diagnostic de la contamination des eaux par les éléments traces la zone aurifère de Komabangou - Tillabéri, Niger . In: International Journal of Biological and Chemical Sciences . Vol. 8, No. 6 , August 5, 2015, p. 2856 ( ajol.info [accessed October 22, 2018]).
  11. ^ Seyni Issa: Site d'orpaillage de Komabangou: la vie humaine, animale et végétale menacée par le cyanure. In: Niger Diaspora. July 20, 2010, accessed October 28, 2018 (French).
  12. ↑ a b Ousseini Issa: Kinderen beteren winstmarges Nigerese gouddelvers. In: MO Mondiaal Nieuws. August 29, 2005, accessed October 28, 2018 (Dutch).
  13. ↑ Niger: Against Child Slavery. Deutscher Caritasverband eV, Caritas International Department, October 2011, accessed on October 28, 2018 .
  14. ^ The Seed. Your 2016 sponsorship update from your sponsored child's community in Niger. (PDF) World Vision UK, 2015, accessed on October 28, 2018 .
  15. ↑ La lutte contre le SIDA au Niger - Stabilization de la pandémie. In: Niger Diaspora. December 1, 2006, accessed October 29, 2018 (French).
  16. ^ Zone de transit, le Niger souffre des pertes économiques dues au trafic de drogue in la sous-région. In: Niamey et les 2 jours. February 21, 2017, accessed October 29, 2018 (French).
  17. ↑ a b c Ousseini Issa: Conflits sur les sites d'orpaillage: Le diktat de détenteurs coutumiers, principale source de conflit. In: Niger Diaspora. October 5, 2016, accessed October 29, 2018 (French).

Coordinates: 14 ° 5 '  N , 1 ° 4'  E