Tackling youth unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa: Is there a role for artisanal and small-scale mining?

• Youth unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa is increasing rapidly.
• Job-creation exercises launched for the region's youth have had minimal impact to date.
• Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech mineral extraction and processing – is providing scores of youth in sub-Saharan Africa with economic relief.
• If supported, ASM could engage even more youth, providing the region's governments with a much-needed platform, in the short-term, for identifying more innovative job-creation programs.

This paper argues that a formalized and supported artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector could assist immeasurably with reducing the intensity of the youth unemployment crisis which now plagues sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of the region's youth have pursued work in the ASM economy in various capacities, decisions which have brought much-needed stability in a landscape devoid of formal sector job opportunities. Host governments and donors, however, have often condemned these moves, failing to fully appreciate why youth have pursued work in ASM in the first place and the impact it has had on their livelihoods. Whilst by no means the solution to the youth unemployment problem in sub-Saharan Africa, heightened emphasis on formalizing and supporting ASM could certainly buy policymakers and donors some valuable time – at least in the short term – to sufficiently ‘re-think’ their ineffective approaches to tackling the crisis.