Roy Maconachie

Artisanal Gold Mining: A New Frontier in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone?

Abstract This paper argues that a formalised small-scale gold mining sector could ameliorate Sierra Leones emerging ‘crisis of youth’. Burgeoning pockets of unemployed young men now found scattered throughout the country, the mobilisation of whom proved instrumental in prolonging civil war in the 1990s, have fuelled fresh concerns about renewed violence. If supported, small-scale gold mining could provide immediate economic relief in the form of direct employment and downstream activities. Its promotion, however, is contingent upon a radical change in mindset in policymaking circles. Gold mining continues to be associated with diamond mining, an industry which perpetuated the countrys civil war.

Diamond mining, urbanisation and social transformation in Sierra Leone

Abstract This contribution critically explores changing relationships between diamond mining and patterns of urbanisation in Sierra Leone. In providing an historical overview of mining expansion and contraction, the paper highlights the significant impacts that mining has had on the rural–urban continuum, and how this has shaped political, economic and social change in diamondiferous regions. Focusing on Kono District, the effects of diamond mining on populations are evaluated before, during and after the civil war, demonstrating how diamonds have had diverse and varying impacts on both population mobility and urban agglomeration at different points in time. While much attention has focused on the social consequences of wartime displacement from diamondiferous areas to the capital city, Freetown, recent research suggests that the post-war return of young people to diamond mining regions has had unexpected consequences. Most significantly, a decline in artisanal mining activities and the rise of large-scale industrial mining has reawakened the interest of young ex-miners in farming, especially those who enjoy hereditary land rights. While one consequence of the war may be that the population is now more urban and more mobile, the paper concludes that the return of young people to their villages of origin, and rapprochement with local chiefs, may be helping to drive a resurgence of community-based cooperation in Kono District, a development which could provide a more durable basis for sustainable and democratic development in the years to come.

‘New agriculture’ for sustainable development? Biofuels and agrarian change in post-war Sierra Leone

In sub-Saharan Africa, commercial bioenergy production has been hailed as a new form of ‘green capitalism’ that will deliver ‘win-win’ outcomes and ‘pro poor’ development. Yet in an era of global economic recession and soaring food prices, biofuel ‘sustainability’ has been at the centre of controversy. This paper focuses on the case of post-war Sierra Leone, a country that has over the last decade been consistently ranked as one of the poorest in the world, facing food insecurity, high unemployment and entrenched poverty. Following a recent government strategy to secure foreign direct investment in biofuels production in agriculturally rich regions of the country, the largest foreign investment in Sierra Leone since the end of its civil war has been secured: a Swiss company is to invest US

Female faces in informal ‘spaces’: Women and artisanal and small-scale mining in sub-Saharan Africa

368 million into a large-scale biofuels project over the course of 3 years, and promises to simultaneously stimulate an enabling environment for investment, provide job opportunities for youth and increase food production. For multiple actors involved in the project, the concept of ‘sustainability’ is crucial but accordingly there are varying interpretations of its meaning. Such differences in interpretation and the complex contradictions within discourses of sustainability are in turn framed by the various scales within which these actors are situated. While attempts have been made to manage these contradictions through global sustainability standards, the unequal power relations between different actors will ultimately determine the ways in which they are likely to be resolved. The paper concludes by reflecting on how these processes may be contributing to a changing governance landscape and wider global political economy within which bioenergy is being produced, processed and consumed.

Youthscapes of Change? Diamonds, Livelihoods and Extractive Industry Investment in Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT This paper critically examines how women employed in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech mineral extraction and processing – in sub-Saharan Africa could be affected by moves made to formalize and support their activities under the Africa Mining Vision (AMV), ‘Africa’s own response to tackling the paradox of great mineral wealth existing side by side with pervasive poverty’. One of the main goals of the AMV is Boosting Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining, which requires signatories to devise strategies for ‘Harnessing the potential of small scale mining to improve rural livelihoods and integration into the rural and national economy’. Moves being made to achieve this, however, could have an adverse impact on many of the women working in ASM in sub-Saharan Africa. Findings from the literature and research being undertaken by the authors in Sierra Leone and Zambia suggest that whilst most women engaged in ASM in the region work informally and, as a result, face very challenging circumstances daily, many have adapted to their surroundings and now earn far more money than they would from any other income-earning activity. Governments must study these dynamics before taking action under the auspices of the AMV to formalize and support women in ASM.

Subterranean Struggles: New Dynamics of Mining, Oil, and Gas in Latin America Edited by Anthony Bebbington and Jeffrey Bury Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013.

Over the past decade, neoliberal reforms, soaring commodity prices and rising global resource demands have led to significant growth in extractive industry investment in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A surge of investment has triggered a variety of responses in mineral-rich communities—from outright rejection, to protest over labour conditions, to acceptance in anticipation of gainful employment. This chapter explores how changing global-economic patterns and processes are shaping livelihood opportunities for young people in resource-rich SSA. Drawing on recent fieldwork carried out in diamondiferous Kono District in Sierra Leone, the chapter provides an extended analysis of contrasting youth perceptions of, and responses toward, extractive industry expansion. The focus on youth, and its heterogeneity as a social category, has important policy implications and will improve understanding of the dynamics and diversity of livelihood strategies in resource-rich developing countries. This analysis is particularly critical in the case of Sierra Leone, where young people are playing important roles in rights-based mobilizations around mining, while at the same time having pressing livelihood needs in an employment-constrained economy. In illuminating the various factors underlying a diverse range of youth responses to extractive industry investment, the chapter concludes by reflecting on how youth perceptions of extractive industry expansion may also be influencing the ways in which mining companies understand and fashion their business and corporate social responsibility strategies.

RE‐AGRARIANISING LIVELIHOODS IN POST‐CONFLICT SIERRA LEONE? MINERAL WEALTH AND RURAL CHANGE IN ARTISANAL AND SMALL‐SCALE MINING COMMUNITIES

In all corners of the developing world, pressures on natural resources have dramatically increased in response to escalating global demands for fuel and nonfuel minerals. Unprecedented global investments in the extractive industries have had significant social, political, and economic implications for actors at all scales but particularly for those at the local level. Such impacts have increasingly led to conflict and struggle, which have arguably become an integral feature of the new geography of extraction. It is therefore no surprise that interest in the extractive industries has also grown rapidly within the wider geography and development studies literature, and more specifically within the field of political ecology. Adding to an already burgeoning body of scholarship, Bebbington and Bury’s recent edited volume offers readers a dynamic and up-to-date account of the struggles and contestations generated by resource extraction in Latin America, drawing upon extensive field-based research in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. What sets this book apart, however, is its unique focus on a political ecology of the subsoil. While much analysis within political ecology has tended to exhibit a surface bias, the collection of chapters in this book offers an original and innovative perspective on how subsoil materials flow across frontiers and boundaries, and transform social life and human-environment relationships. In doing so, it makes an important contribution to understanding the relationship between the subsoil and Latin American political economy, and, more specifically, how placebased struggles around natural resources become nested within the wider structures and processes of a new geography of extraction. The book is comprised of 11 chapters, which together trace the political-ecological transformations that have become characteristic of the last two decades of expansion in the region’s extractives economy. While the various contributions in the collection address different elements of this trajectory, they all converge around the particular issue of struggle. The introductory overview by Bebbington and Bury serves as an effective road map for the chapters to follow, providing a convincing case for engaging with a political ecology of the subsoil. Here, the analytical and political significance of the subsoil is presented and located within recent trends and transformations in Latin America. The theoretical and methodological foundations for a political ecology of the subsoil are also succinctly outlined. Building on these foundations, Chapter 2 by Bury and Bebbington then sketches out the contours of the new political economy of extraction in the Andean-Amazonian region, offering insight on both the historical and macroeconomic dimensions of recent extractive-driven transformations. The message of the chapter is clear: the territorialized dimensions of contemporary change in the extractives sector have not appeared in a vacuum and must be understood as a process that has been shaped by wider forces across time and space. This broader geographical and temporal context sets the stage for the empirical case study Chapters 3 through 8, all of which adopt a subnational focus. Drawing on detailed research carried out in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, a range of important contemporary themes are explored, including struggles around resource nationalism (Perreault); the tension between mining and conservation (Bury and Norris); conflicts between mining and alternative livelihoods (Moore and Velasquez); the effects 115 BO O K R EV EW