Political Economy of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining

Why does artisanal gold mining expand rapidly across Africa despite criminalisation? This book takes you inside an occupation of Obuasi, a historic mining town in Ghana’s and South Africa’s ‘zama zama’ in deindustrialising Ekurhuleni. You will delve deep into cases where large-scale gold mines were in decline how these localised trends are a direct product of free-market reforms and intersecting ecological and social reproduction crisis. Weaving together the theories of Karl Marx, Jarius Banaji, and Max Ajl, I argue that artisanal mining fills a vacuum left by states and large corporations. For a ground-breaking analysis that links local mining struggles to global capitalism’s crises, this is your essential read.

Hibist Wendemu Kassa, Ph.D. (2019), is a Research Associate at Department of Higher Education and Training -National Research Fund SARChI Chair in Community, Adult & Workers’ Education. She is also a member of the Institute for Environmental Futures at the University of Leicester. She has published on artisanal mining policy and social reproduction. She also edited a Special Issue on African Resource Sovereignty: Development or Environmental Vandalism? in the New Agenda: South African Journal of Social and Economic Policy published by the Institute for African Alternatives.