Mozambique’s northeast region has long relied on an expansive ruby mine that brought government revenue, headaches for policymakers and a hard lesson in who gets counted and who gets crushed. The mine sold some five million carats and earned about $6 million, nearly a fifth of the overall revenue from mining, while the government at one point treated most of the 60,000 artisanal miners around it as illegal and cracked down on them.
Those miners were not ghosts. Many were people from local communities who earned a living sifting through soil to extract rubies for sale, even as the state and licensed operators centered their own interests. The mine is mostly run by a licensed major operator, but the people doing the backbreaking work at the margins were pushed into the category the apparatus loves most: disposable.
Who Gets Called Illegal
Fatima Mimbire, a project director and extractive industry researcher from Mozambique, said the country, like most others across the continent, had regarded artisanal miners as illegal. She said: “But after research, we presented the facts, and that is changing. Many of them are members of communities where these resources are found but are not integrated into the mining economy. The state always focused on big mining companies, excluding the local people.”
She made the remarks on the sidelines of the Regional High-Level Conference on Governance, Critical Minerals and Conflict in Africa, organised by the Open Society Foundations. The three-day forum called on African governments to approach critical minerals by placing democratic governance, accountability, industrialisation, peacebuilding and citizen participation at the centre of the continent’s response to growing global demand for strategic mineral resources. The language sounds tidy enough. The reality on the ground has been anything but.
In Mozambique, the lack of inclusion is partly blamed for the rise of extremist groups that have forced thousands from their homes and sometimes attack mines. Mimbire said Mozambican communities had traditionally practised artisanal mining to survive, long before global firms arrived in their areas. She also said a special licence had been created for local small-scale miners, although it had never been implemented.
What the Communities Built Themselves
The people at the bottom have not waited for permission to organize. Mimbire said Mozambique was reversing the trend by allowing informal miners to create associations that engage directly with authorities, register small firms and train members on their rights and obligations. She said: “They are now able to explain that they are small-scale miners, not criminals. They are training their members, looking for partners, and formalising their operations. The locals have also organised themselves into groups and scheduled the sale of their minerals on specific days so they do not have to compete. We can prevent conflicts between formal mining companies and artisanal miners. The state should incentivise the associations and implement programmes to introduce new technology to them.”
That’s the clearest thing in the whole pile of conference language: people organizing themselves because the official system left them out. They formed associations, registered small firms and set sale days so they wouldn’t be forced into direct competition with each other. No minister invented that. No boardroom did either.
The lack of structured engagement with artisanal miners has fuelled illegal dealing, including smuggling. Mimbire said: “They are not paying taxes because they are marginalised. No one takes them into account. They are just surviving.” She added: “For me, the problem is the promise and expectation of quick money that big companies can pay upfront. But this informality is costing the government a lot of money in revenue. In informal trading, they find buyers who pay less than they should. That is why some foreigners are fuelling that informality because they know they can pay less.”
Who Controls the Wealth
Dr Chukwuemeka B. Eze, Director of Democratic Futures in Africa (DFA) at Open Society Foundations, based in Dakar, Senegal, said most mines are located in rural areas and local communities are often told to relocate and allow mining firms to take over. He said sometimes they resist and other times they are forcibly removed, leaving long-term resentment. He said: “If you look at most of Africa’s critical minerals today, they are all in rural communities. Most of these rural communities that have these critical minerals are also places where there are issues of conflict and civil war.”
He added: “These are governance questions. If the government cannot manage mineral resources, if it cannot distribute wealth or involve local communities in decisions on how to manage critical minerals, it increases the propensity for conflict. Lack of transparency is responsible for some of the poverty that we see in Africa today, as well as some of the conflict.”
Patient Matabishi, Civil Society Coordinator in the Democratic Republic of Congo and leader of the NGO Dynamic Community for Social Cohesion and Development (DYCOD-RDC), said stakeholders from the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the world’s most mineral-rich countries, have experienced illegal mining for decades. He said: “Many times, mining companies lie to the public. They promise to build roads or schools but vanish after extracting the minerals. We need a strong link between communities and governments to ensure leaders listen to the public.”
He added: “If you go to a village that has minerals, you will often find that it has no roads or other infrastructure to serve the people. The people feel marginalised. Unfortunately, outsiders take advantage of that and drive a wedge between communities to profit from it.”
Matabishi said conflict in the Congo is both a cause and an effect of poor governance in the mining sector, especially the marginalisation of artisanal miners. He said in some mining areas communities have had to pick up arms to protect their resources, while in other places people picked up arms because they were incentivised to join the looting or were funded by outsiders to do so. He said: “The local people are not stupid, even if they may not have gone to school or are old. They know what they want. If the government signs contracts with mining companies, it is very important that it speaks with the people and properly explains what is happening. Many times, this doesn’t happen.”
As of 2026, current UN data show that nearly a third of the world’s critical mineral reserves, including cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, nickel, graphite, bauxite, platinum and other rare earth minerals, are found across the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia, Guinea, Mali, Morocco and other African countries. That makes Africa’s role in the global energy transition, including the production of electric vehicle batteries, hydrogen power technologies, electronics and electric vehicles, increasingly important.
Washington has already framed that wealth as a strategic prize. The article said the United States, in its National Security Strategy, has described African critical minerals as essential to diversifying supply chains away from China, securing resources for clean energy and advanced manufacturing, and deepening partnerships through investment, infrastructure and diplomatic agreements. It identified corridors such as the Lobito Corridor in Angola and bilateral frameworks with mineral-rich African states as part of that strategy.
Dennis Mwinkpeng, a Resource Economist at Open Society Foundations, said artisanal miners sometimes produce more minerals than formal companies in countries such as Ghana and Zimbabwe. He said: “We have underestimated the potential of this sector for a very long time. For instance, in Ghana, more than 50 percent of gold production in 2025 came from small-scale miners. It is not that there are no big companies in Ghana, but the output of these small-scale producers is significant.” He added: “A large portion of the supply chain rests with local artisanal miners. With big mining companies, very little benefit goes to communities. With small-scale miners, whatever they earn, they reinvest in the local community, whether through procuring goods and services or supporting related businesses.”
That’s the split in plain sight: the wealth comes up from rural communities, while the power, contracts and revenue flows keep running through the top. The miners keep digging. The institutions keep talking about governance.