Two teenagers have died in a pit collapse at an artisanal mine in Eastern Province, Sierra Leone. Mohamed Bangura (16) and Yahyah Janneh (17), from the village of Nyimbadu, had skipped school to work at the mine, one of the few ways to own a cash income in the remote village. Yahyah Janneh's mother, Namina, admits to having encouraged her son to mine gold, as a widow needing the extra income to help support her other children, but says that she would not have wanted him to go to the pit where he was killed, as this was known to be dangerous.
The incident comes at the height of the West African rainy season, which often causes problems in Sierra Leone. Landslides are a common problem after severe weather events, as excess pore water pressure can overcome cohesion in soil and sediments, allowing them to flow like liquids. Approximately 90% of all landslides are caused by heavy rainfall. However the situation has been made worse in Sierra Leone since the civil war of the 1990s, since when the country has effectively been bankrupt and unable to invest in maintenance of roads or infrastructure, despite being one of the most mineral rich countries of Africa.
The government of Sierra Leone has made the decision to invest heavily in education, seeing it as a way to provide people with a means to improve their own situations, and of creating a workforce able to help address the country's many problems. It currently spends about 8.9% of GDP on education, compared to an average of about 3.5% of GDP across the West and Central Africa regions, 5.59% in the US, 4.1% in the UK, and 4.7% in the EU. However, because of Sierra Leone's low GDP, this does mean that the amount spent on education per child is lower than in many African countries. Sierra Leone spent 34% of its domestic budget on education and 52.41% on debt servicing in 2023, the last year for which statistics are available.
Keeping children in school presents an additional challenge; many rural communities in Sierra Leone are dependent on subsistence farming, which provides little or no cash income, while working in artisanal mines can produce an income of around US$3.50 per week (less than half the theoretical minimum wage for Sierra Leone), with the potential for occasional bonanzas producing tens of dollars at a time. Against this background, many children (and some teachers) chose to skip school to work in minefields, repeating the country's cycle of poor educational achievement and subsequent low incomes.
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