At least 48 people were killed in western Mali after an illegally operated goldmine collapsed on Saturday, officials said.
One of Africa’s leading gold producers, Mali frequently witnesses fatal incidents involving miners in unregulated mines.
“The death toll is 48 following the landslide,” a police official told AFP news agency. The victims were mostly young women, including a mother who was carrying her child on her back.
The collapse took place at an abandoned mine formerly operated by a Chinese company, AFP reported, citing unnamed sources. “It’s an illegal site. There is a lot of complicity in the exploitation of this type of site in the region,” Boubacar Keita from the Kenieba gold prospectors’ association said.
The head of a local environmental organisation said the search for the victims was ongoing.
Malian authorities have been under mounting pressure to contain unregulated mining of the precious metal in the western African country, which is among the world’s poorest.
Artisanal mining is common across much of western Africa and has risen in recent years due to growing demand for metals and rising prices.
Fatal accidents are common too because artisanal miners generally use old-fashioned and unregulated methods of digging.
In January, at least 10 people died in a landslide at a goldmine in southern Mali and many went missing, most of them women. A similar accident in January 2024 left over 70 people dead.
“Gold is by far Mali‘s most important export, comprising more than 80 per cent of total exports in 2021,” the International Trade Administration of the US Department of Commerce notes, adding that more than two million people, or over 10 per cent of the country’s population, depend on the mining sector for livelihood.
According to government data, artisanal mines in Mali produced an estimated six tonnes of gold in 2023. In recent years, there have been growing concerns that profits from unregulated mining in northern Mali could benefit Islamist extremists active in that part of the country.
