Fight against clandestine gold panning: 488 million FCFA to secure seven gold sites
The State of Senegal is launching a new offensive to better regulate artisanal gold mining in the regions of Kédougou and Tambacounda. The Ministries of Mines and Geology and the Armed Forces signed, on Tuesday, a partnership protocol entrusting Military Engineering with carrying out work to demarcate and secure seven pilot gold panning corridors, for an amount estimated at 488.4 million CFA francs.
The agreement, signed at the headquarters of the Ministry of the Armed Forces by Ministers Cheikhou Oumar Seck and Yankhoba Diémé, provides, over a period of two years, for the development of seven gold sites, each covering an indicative area of one square kilometer. Each perimeter will be surrounded by a rigid galvanized mesh fence approximately four kilometers long, two meters high, topped with concertina and equipped with a gate.
Beyond the physical security of sites, the project aims to transform the conditions for artisanal gold panning. The corridors will notably be equipped with boreholes, solar installations, toilets, places of prayer, canteens and nurseries. These are particularly aimed at protecting children and providing relief to women gold miners, who are often forced to work with their babies on their backs.
A first phase will concern three sites in the Kédougou region, namely Ngary, Kaviar and Sekhoto. The four other sites will be taken care of after the necessary technical, geological, cadastral, land and environmental validations.
For the Minister of Mines and Geology, this initiative responds to an imperative of economic sovereignty and security. Cheikhou Oumar Seck recalled that artisanal mining provides a living for more than 31,000 people in Senegal, according to old estimates, while highlighting the excesses of clandestine activity: dangerous working conditions, degradation of ecosystems, pollution of waterways, notably the Falémé, and development of informal gold marketing circuits escaping state control.
The ambition displayed by his department is to formalize at least 50% of players in the sector by 2029 and to ensure the traceability of artisanal production. By this deadline, the government plans to open 38 gold panning corridors, including ten pilots, as part of the Strategic Roadmap for the mining sector 2026-2029.
His colleague from the Armed Forces, Yankhoba Diémé, for his part, insisted on the security dimension of the project. In these sensitive border areas, he noted, clandestine gold panning encourages illicit activities and complicates the control of spaces. The seizures and dismantling of clandestine sites carried out by the units deployed on the ground demonstrate, according to him, the scale of the challenges.
In a sub-regional context marked by instability, the minister believes that the regulation of gold mining will contribute to better control of territories and the prevention of security risks.
The use of military engineering is thus part of a logic of pooling State skills and strengthening the “Army-Nation” concept.
The two ministers, however, stressed that the success of the partnership will depend on the availability of financial resources, coordination between services, compliance with deadlines and the involvement of territorial authorities and local communities.
