Would You Fight? We Asked Aggrieved Artisanal Miners in Eastern Congo

Abstract

To meet the rising demand for minerals, mining companies have ventured into fragile areas, often at the expense of artisanal miners. This has led to grievances, and at times violence. Who among the aggrieved intend to use violence? How can peace be maintained? This paper uses individual-level data to address these questions. Among a sample of 469 about-to-be-evicted artisanal miners in Eastern Congo, we inquire about the intention to engage in several forms of violence. We identify how this intention varies with miners’ past exposure to violence and attitudes towards policies that seek social peace. A large proportion of miners intends to destroy the company’s property, attack its employees, use fire arms, or join an armed group. These would-be-fighters are motivated by grievances, as well as material and social incentives. Our results contribute to understanding the micro-motivations underpinning the local resource curse and entail concrete lessons for mining policies.

How much do artisanal miners earn? An inquiry among Congolese gold miners

“…After the wars ended, the Congolese government sought to increase its inflow of foreign exchange, among others by introducing a new, fiscally attractive, mining code. Combined with favorable mineral prices on the world market, the new code attracted large-scale mining investment (Stoop et al, 2019). The three mining permits on which Kamituga town and its surrounding mining sites are located, were acquired by Banro, a Canada-based multinational (Geenen, 2015).…”

“…What are the implications for miners' earnings? First, the spatial restrictions imposed by Banro at the time of our research depressed miners' earnings (see also Kilosho Buraye et al, 2017;Stoop and Verpoorten, n.d.). Technological innovations such as the introduction of ball mills and better performing water pumps increased ASM productivity, but were repressed by Banro (Mulonda et al, 2019).…”