Gold mining in Sanmatenga, Burkina Faso: governing sites, appropriating wealth

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Book chapter

Title:	Gold mining in Sanmatenga, Burkina Faso: governing sites, appropriating wealth
Author:	Luning, Sabine
Book title:	Dilemmas of development: conflicts of interest and their resolutions in modernizing Africa
Year:	2008
Pages:	189-205
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Burkina Faso
Subjects:	gold mining State brokers mining companies
Abstract:	The author examines a case study of a gold rush in the province of Sanmatenga (Burkina Faso) and situates this case in a wider field of relationships implicating State authorities, national and international gold companies, and local intermediaries as well as international banking institutions and donor organizations. The author discusses the political economy of mining titles, and the moral geography of the gold site in question. She questions the assumption that liberalization can be equated to a weakening of the State per se, showing that the State is still in a dominant position as singular authorizing instance to issue permits for research and exploitation of sites as well as for the rights to buy and sell gold. Furthermore, the State in Burkina Faso is still the owner of natural resources, but what should be done with these resources is co-determined by international organizations, which are not politically accountable. What constitutes the basis of the authority of these outsiders to govern the gold mining activities is far from clear to the local villagers and gold miners. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]