Hello!👋🏽 My name is Kofi, a father of three and an active artisanal gold miner. I was born into mining and digging for gold has been a part of my family’s tradition for as long as I can remember. With no formal education and limited employment prospects, the wages from my activities are enough to take care of my family and put my children through school. The eldest is now at the university.
I am aware of the implications of mining and understand that some of the mining approaches my colleagues and I adopt are not sustainable. For instance, we locate areas close to the ones left by the big mining companies and start digging. We are not lucky all the time (which means we leave some open trenches sometimes) but when we are, we wash a lot of the metallic ore in rivers and use mercury to extract our gold.
There is no sustainable alternative approach at the relevant stages of the mining value chain and the existing techniques are not ones I can afford. Do I do nothing then? No! I cannot watch my family sleep on a hungry stomach. As a responsible man, I will do anything to ensure the survival of my family.
