ISS warns that criminalising artisanal miners hands Africa's mines to crime networks

The ISS piece of 28 October opens with the deaths of 37 young people and children in September 2026 in the custody of the NSCDC civil defence corps in Minna, in Nigeria's Niger State. They had been arrested as illegal miners in raids by the Mining Marshals, a special NSCDC unit. An investigative panel found that the deaths were caused by suffocation in inhumane conditions and were preventable. The authors place the case within a wider pattern of violence by security forces against miners, including extrajudicial killings, in Cameroon, the DRC and the Central African Republic.

According to the piece, about 13.2 million artisanal and small-scale miners work in Africa; in Central Africa the number rose from about 100,000 in 2013 to 2.6 million. The sector brings in an estimated $3–5 billion in foreign exchange a year, supplied 32–41% of Africa's gold output in 2022 and 52–74% of global tantalum production in 2017–2023. The authors argue that slow and costly licensing pushes miners outside the law, while criminalisation drives the trade underground and makes it easier for armed groups to levy 'taxes' and protection money. The piece notes that political elites and soldiers have stakes in mining in Chad and South Africa, and that enforcement remains selective.

The ISS sets out four recommendations: legislation defining the scope of artisanal mining, protection of miners from abuse by police and private security, treating miners as partners in the extractive economy rather than criminals, and alternative livelihoods for young people. The piece cites the DRC's creation in April 2026 of a US-backed $100 million mine guard force as an example of the securitisation of mineral wealth.