At least 48 people, most of them women and including at least one infant, have died in a collapse at a gold mine at Bilali Koto near the town of Kéniéba in the Kayes Region of western Mali on Saturday 15 February 2025. The incident is reported to have happened at an abandoned open-pit mine formerly operated by a Chinese company, which the women had entered to pan for gold, a traditional income-generating activity for women in the dry season in western Mali, and neighbouring parts of Senegal and Guinea, caried out since at least the time of the (famously gold-rich) medieval Mali Empire.
Artisanal mining is widespread in many parts of Africa. It is often referred to as 'illicit', though in an area with little formal employment this is somewhat unfair, with local people viewing small scale mining as a traditional way of gaining some hard cash. The area is covered by poorly consolidated alluvial (river) sediments, washed out from the mineral rich Fouta Djallon Highlands, in neighbouring Guinea, since the last ice age. These loose sediments can be excavated and panned to produce small amounts of gold and diamonds. This can be a dangerous task, as sediments close to the surface are likely to have been worked by previous generations of villagers, requiring deeper pits to be dug into the, often waterlogged, sediments, with the accompanying risk of pit collapses. The Bilali Koto mine appears to have been originally excavated by a Chinese firm using machinery, but following its abandonment to have been entered by local women using artisanal tools.
West Africa has a distinct two season climatic cycle, with a cool dry season during the northern winter when prevalent winds blow from the Sahara to the northeast, and a warm rainy season during the northern summer when prevalent winds blow from the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest. These warm winds from the Atlantic are laden with moisture, which can be lost rapidly when the air encounters cooler conditions, such as when it is pushed up to higher altitudes by the Futa Jallon Mountains of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
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