Gold Mining in the Sahara-Sahel: The Political Geography of State-making and Unmaking

In the Sahara-Sahel, artisanal gold mining is booming. Fragile Sahelian states arguably provide a most likely case for the ‘resource conflict’ theory to hold, yet ‘resource capture’ can also underpin informal governance schemes through which the co-optation of non-state actors ushers in (hybrid) state-building. While the diversity of empirical cases lends credibility to both theories, the dialectic of proximity and distance–both social and spatial–helps make sense of the different modalities of artisanal gold mining governance in the region. In the Sahelian core of regional states, artisanal gold mining has supported regime empowerment; in the Sahara, it has helped assuage pre-existing tensions; in the Tibesti, it has led to militarisation and conflict.