New video footage appearing to show a deadly landslide at the Zamboye gold mining site in the Central African Republic has brought renewed attention to the precarious nature of artisanal mining in the region.
The footage, filmed on 18 August, shows the moment a wall of earth and sand collapsed, burying miners who were operating within the site. The disaster occurred in an area where artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is a primary source of livelihood for thousands of residents but remains largely unregulated.
The incident, highlighted the vulnerability of workers in these informal pits. While official casualty figures for the Zamboye collapse are often delayed due to the remote nature of the sites, such landslides are common in the Central African Republic (CAR) where miners dig deep, unsupported shafts into unstable terrain.
Gold mining is a cornerstone of the CAR economy, providing critical foreign exchange for a state that has struggled with prolonged instability and conflict. However, the sector is split between a few industrial operations and a vast, fragmented network of artisanal miners who operate without formal engineering oversight or safety equipment.
These miners typically rely on manual tools and basic knowledge of geology, often digging tunnels that lack the structural reinforcement required to prevent collapses during heavy rain or soil shifting.
Systemic Risks in Central African Republic’s Informal Mining
The Zamboye tragedy is a symptom of a broader lack of regulatory enforcement within the CAR mining sector. The government has frequently struggled to formalise the ASM sector, leaving a vacuum filled by local middlemen and, in some regions, armed groups who tax the output of artisanal sites.
The World Bank has previously noted that while artisanal mining can reduce poverty in fragile states, it often does so at a high human and environmental cost. Without government-provided technical assistance or safety training, miners are forced to take extreme risks to access high-grade gold veins.
Beyond the physical dangers, the informality of the sector creates significant economic leakages. A substantial portion of the gold extracted from sites like Zamboye is smuggled across borders to neighbouring countries, depriving the CAR treasury of vital royalty payments and taxes that could be used to improve infrastructure and safety standards.
The lack of a transparent supply chain also makes the gold produced in these regions susceptible to being labelled as “conflict gold.” International frameworks, such as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains, urge companies and traders to ensure that minerals do not fund armed conflict or involve human rights abuses, including the failure to provide safe working conditions.
For the miners at Zamboye, the lack of insurance or social safety nets means that a single landslide not only results in loss of life but often plunges the surviving family members into deeper poverty.
Industry observers suggest that unless the CAR government can successfully implement a formalisation strategy—providing miners with legal titles, basic geological maps, and safety training—the sector will continue to be characterised by sporadic but deadly accidents.
The current administration has faced pressure to improve the governance of its extractive industries to attract more formal foreign investment. However, the persistence of unsafe artisanal sites suggests that the gap between national policy and on-the-ground reality remains wide.
Efforts to resolve these issues will likely depend on the state’s ability to regain full security control over mining territories and establish a functioning regulatory presence at the site level to prevent further avoidable tragedies.
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Michael Okowa
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