Not long ago, the Ministry of Mining announced the discovery of gold deposits in a farm owned by the family of the late Aleke Banda at Tukombo in Nkhata Bay.
The ministry made the announcement after dozens of illegal miners had invaded the estate to dig for the precious stone using any sharp metal at their disposal, including hoes and pickaxes.
“Gold deposits have also been found a kilometre away from the farm. We have also found gold deposits in some areas in Neno, Balaka and Ntcheu districts,” said the ministry’s spokesperson, Andrew Mkonda Banda.
Mkonda Banda warned that it is illegal to start mining activities without acquiring a licence.
Across the country, illegal artisanal mining is proliferating. While it is an indication of the mineral riches the country has, the widespread nature of illegal mining activities seems to spell doom for Malawi’s development goals.
Experts note that the increasing number of people engaging in illegal mining not only poses a threat to environmental protection; it also puts at risk Malawi’s attainment of some of the Sustainable Development Goals.
One of them is SDG4 which calls upon United Nations member states, which includes Malawi, to ensure universal access to inclusive and equitable quality education.
This education should be free and compulsory, leaving no one behind irrespective of his or her gender, disabilities, social and economic situation.
However, Malawi is leaving behind scores of children in Group Village Head Chaphulika in Traditional Authority Zilakoma in Nkhata Bay and Senior GVH Saiti Mwasungu in Traditional Authority Makanjira in Mangochi – thanks to what should have been a blessing: artisanal mining.
Primary Education Advisor for Tukombo Zone in Nkhata Bay, Mazongolo Banda, says illegal mining has come along with a big toll on children’s education as many frequently absent themselves from school and many more consequently drop out.
According to Banda, children aged as young as 12 years old are dropping out of school to join mining business.
For example in the previous academic year, 16 percent of boys and 15 percent of girls dropped out of school in the zone, many of them due to the allure of artisanal mining.
“In our assessment, we discovered that the majority of the boys, some aged as young as 11, were engaged in illegal mining as a way of getting money to supplement family income while girls are advised to stay at home to care for the babies as the parents go mining,” Banda says.
Studies have shown that children’s participation in artisanal and small-scale mining has a consequential effect on their education, both in terms of school attendance and academic performance.
Despite the substantial contribution of artisanal mining to economic growth and livelihood diversification, this highly informal sector also poses diverse challenges, among them environmental pollution and social problems that can hinder development.
In Ghana, for instance, small-scale mining activities led to a downward spiral in school enrolments, leading to public concerns about the participation of children and young people in mining work.
For Banda, the involvement of children and young people in mining frustrates national and community efforts to improve education.
“People of all ages are engaged in this occupation, including school children, girls, men and women. But at the end of the day, it is the future of these young people that we all need to be worried about most,” he says.
GVH Chaphulika in Nkhata Bay and Senior GVH Saiti Mwasungu in Mangochi lament that instead of benefiting from being grounds of precious stones, their areas are bearing the brunt of the activities.
“What we have is a trail of sexually-transmitted infections among young girls, child pregnancies and marriages, deforestation, pollution of the rivers where we fetch our drinking water and degradation. This is what this mining business has brought,” Mwasungu says.
These revelations prompted Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP), Natural Resources Justice Network (NRJN) and Norwegian Church Aid and Danish Church Aid (NCA-DCA) Malawi Joint Country Programme to undertake a joint project to provide advocacy for health and education in these areas.
NCA-DCA Malawi Joint Country Programme Coordinator (Fighting Inequality), Wezzie Banda- Matsimbe, says they were concerned with the negative impacts the industry has on the society following failure by the authorities to regulate the sector.
Banda-Matsimbe says while attention has been paid to the social and legal aspects of it, there has been inadequate consideration of social-economic issues.
“Our findings revealed that most children join artisanal small-scale mining businesses because of poverty.
“These findings highlight the need to formalise the sector to reduce the negative impacts, support operators and promote best practices,” she says.
CCJP Programme Officer, Tuntufye Simwimba, expresses concern that proceeds from the mining sector are not trickling down to the communities in which mining activities are taking place, despite the country adopting Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) in December 2015.
“Additionally, the sector is marked by conflict between investors and communities around mining operations with the latter decrying high levels of corruption, lack of transparency, accountability, inclusiveness and responsiveness,” he says.
Spokesperson in the Ministry of Education, Mphatso Nkuonera, says the ministry is yet to conduct a study to establish the extent to which illegal mining has affected the education sector.
However, Nkuonera points out that the ministry is aware of the impacts illegal mining has had on children’s education over the years.
“But I can’t conclusively say to what extent until we conduct an investigation. So, until then, I would like to ask you to give me more time before I can confidently tell you how much children have dropped out of school because of illegal mining,” he says.
