‘Children toil at dangerous work in Sierra Leone’s sand-mining boom’ 5 April 2024

It has become a common sight along Sierra Leone’s rivers: children as young as 10 bending under the weight of heavy buckets of sand. Some wade into the water to gather sand from the riverbed by hand. Others place buckets on their heads and carry them up the muddy banks. Among them is Abu Koroma, a thin 12-year-old boy. Every day, he spends four hours after school on this back-breaking work on the Sewa River near Bo, one of the West African country’s biggest cities. Toiling alongside adult miners, he augments his family’s meagre income by gathering the sand that fuels Sierra Leone’s construction boom. “To buy food for us, clothing, school fees and shelter, I should help,” he told The Globe and Mail in a determined voice.

…Sand mining, crucial for the construction sector in countries such as Sierra Leone, has tripled in volume worldwide in the past two decades, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)… Sand is the most mined material globally, with the UNEP estimating that 50 billion tonnes are harvested annually. It has become a “strategic resource” – yet it remains “off the radar” for governments and others, the agency said, warning that the relentless growth of the sand sector is unsustainable, a looming environmental and social crisis. Across much of Africa, including Sierra Leone, the number of sand-extraction sites is proliferating, making them difficult to monitor and regulate. They operate with minimal government oversight. Regulators tend to focus on industrial mines, rather than the smaller-scale operations that are considered less environmentally damaging.

…Child labour is widespread in Sierra Leone, despite laws against it. In the bigger cities, children often work on breaking granite rocks into gravel, sold for cement production. Child miners, known locally as “half shovels,” are heavily involved in the country’s diamond mining sites…The informal nature of the industry worsens the inequalities. The bulk of profits goes to middlemen and truck owners, leaving the labourers, including children, to endure harsh working conditions for meagre earnings. Many mining households choose to sell all their sand at the end of the season, earning a single lump-sum payment from truck owners, who wield significant influence over the prices.