Mining and Sustainable Development, A Major Challenge for an Emerging Africa: Case of the Impact of Mining on Women in Africa

The industrial and traditional exploitation of gold has seriously affected the prefecture of Siguiri which is an area of excellence by exploitation. It has a reserve that amounts to more than 59 million tonnes of gold ore with the establishment of the Anglo Gold Ashanti Company of Guinea (SAG). However, the prefecture of Siguiri has experienced a strong population explosion in recent years with mining. The traditional mining process is carried out with a network in very deep and often very risky wells. Women are secondary actors as some people point out because they assist the owners of the wells in washing the extracted sand and in the end they do not benefit from the revenues in accordance with the efforts made. The analysis of the exploited areas allowed us to appreciate the level of execution and the impact of traditional exploitation on the standard of living of women (level of participation, sharing of profits from work, lack of accountability). To address this theme, we asked ourselves the following research question: What are the explanatory factors of the impact of traditional gold mining on the women of Doko? This question allowed us to have a provisional answer which states that: the impact of traditional gold mining on the women of Doko is due to socio-cultural and economic factors. This also allowed us to have as general objective: To produce knowledge on the impact of traditional gold mining on the socio-economic life of Doko women. By following a mixed methodology, we arrived at results relating to the advantages and disadvantages of mining on the women of Doko. The results show that only 20% of women in Doko are able to meet their revenue needs from washing the sand in the gold mine. While 80% of these women live in total misery and some even lose their homes due to lack of trust between them and their husbands.