Francis Ogwang uses a generator-powered drilling machine to cut rocks in search of gold in September 2024 at Nakabat valley in Rupa sub-county, Moroto District. PHOTO/ TOBBIAS JOLLY OWINY
In September 2018, Mr Francis Ogwang, then a driver with a renowned tour company based in Lira City, was contacted by an anonymous client who claimed to be in Kampala and wanted him to drive to Moroto Town in the Karamoja Sub-region.
Whereas the parcel in an A-3-sized envelope, which was instead received at Opit Town Council in Omoro District, later caused his suspension for fears that it would impact the company’s image, Ogwang says his life has never been the same since then. Upon learning of his suspension, the dealers, who loved his flexibility during transportation, convinced him to relocate to Moroto Town and engage in the gold trade.
“It was a desperate situation, but I accepted. They asked me to go and base in Moroto Town and help with their coordination, but town life was tough. They relocated me to Nakabat, where I was tasked to retail gold from the artisanal miners, who sold daily all they harvested.” On an average day, Mr Ogwang arrives at his quarry site located in a 12 square-km Nakabat valley by 6am to put everything in order.
It is at this time that his fuel supplier from Moroto Town arrives to deliver his 10 litres of fuel to run his generator that powers the rock-drilling machine. “I also use that time to single out and contract my boys, I contract about four men and they make sure the gold harvest they realise, is brought to me at 5:00 pm when I close business,” says Mr Ogwang, who comes from Alolololo, Alebtong District.
At Nakabat, the gold chain encompasses all the stages involved in getting minerals from the ground to the final buyer. The chain, according to Ogwang, also involves various activities, actors, and low-cost technology relating to extracting the mineral from the rocks and sieving them into a crude form, ready for sale.
Tucked in Moroto’s most remote corner (bordering Turkana), some 48km from Moroto Town, Nakabat Gold Valley is isolated. At its bottom, children, youth, and elders are busy sieving out gold from the muddy waters carried in pails in the hot dust of an angry sun. The scrappy valley, sitting among the ranges of Moroto, provides the most crucial income source not only to the people in Rupa Sub-county but other districts neighbouring Moroto.
It is home to approximately 3,509 artisanal miners according to records at Rupa Sub-county headquarters. In the valley, gold mining is largely informal and dominated by artisanal and small-scale miners who use rudimentary tools to extract minerals and are often involved in illegal mining.
“Here, 95 percent of the gold mined is done by artisanal and small-scale mining operators, from women, children, and men sieving mud with buckets to those using electric systems to do the same tasks. Law enforcement is rare and operations monitoring is rarely done, there are so many groups who run in cartels and each of them has a specific chain through which they source and trade their produce (gold),” Ogwang says.
In the past six years, according to the authorities of Rupa Sub-county, there has been a significant increase in illegal and informal gold mining and trading in the valley. The dealers, we learnt, trade the gold to the country’s capital Kampala, or it is smuggled across borders into the neighbouring Kenya or South Sudan.
Miners carry out small scale gold mining in Karamoja. FILE PHOTO
Mr Justus Aruwon, an artisanal miner in the valley, rode us to the Lokiriama border between Turkana (Kenya) and Uganda, an organised village where the artisanal miners exchange gold for cattle. “To secure a big bull or a mature cow, the quantity of gold you give those Turkana pastoralists at the border is not uniform, but the quantity if sold on the Ugandan market, ranges between Shs900,000 and Shs1.2 million,” Mr Aruwon says.
Artisan mining
Artisanal mining in this area is done not only by the residents of this area, that valley has almost all nationals from every East African countries, the activities conducted there involve locals and people from neighbouring countries, which results in the illicit dealing and smuggling of gold across borders, Aruwon says.
Today, nearly 32,000 Karimojong indigenous people are estimated to be labouring as artisanal miners, with more arriving from other regions of the country and neighbouring countries to earn a living from the trade.
According to Aruwon, it cashes about USD100 (approximately Shs360,000) for every 100 grammes of gold. The smugglers who are said to be shipping the illicit mineral (gold) across borders with Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, and other destinations are encouraged by the absence of a national chain of custody or mineral traceability system. In the sub-region, gold is not the only mineral being mined at the moment. For example, several companies have set up their bases in the region to extract different types of minerals.
Loss of government revenue
In Moroto District, illegal mining activities are also said to have resulted in under-reporting production and undermining tax collections since the illegal miners and artisanal and small-scale miners sell the minerals to intermediaries who then smuggle them across the country’s porous borders. According to the Karamoja Mining Interest Group (KAMIG), a consortium of at least 30 civil society organisations in the Karamoja sub-region, over 60 percent of Karamoja’s land is under mineral concessions for investors, disproportionately impacting marginalised groups like women, girls, and children.
Mr Raphael Lomoe Lotukei, the KAMIG coordinator, in an interview, said a failure by the government to establish a compliance monitoring mechanism against illegal gold mining activities has resulted in the spread of the vice. According to Mr Lotukei, while they expected the Directorate of Geological Surveys and Mines at the Ministry of Energy to be sensitising these communities, the government has sat back and watched the illegalities go on.
The advocacy group now wants the government to develop a system where it can track miners, including the mobility of illegal gold traffickers. “That is where we are having a challenge, but we are now mobilising these artisanal miners to be in groups. We are also engaging the district and government on the massive revenue being lost because we don’t know the middlemen buying this gold that is sold in Kampala and other neighbouring countries,” He adds.
The reason you find most people in Moroto now on illegal mining activities is to secure income to sustain their families that is the only available alternative, the poverty is biting everywhere when you move around most of these illegal mining sites like Nakabat, it is poverty and failure to provide for their families, that is forcing them there, Mr Lotukei says. In addition to Nakabat in Moroto, in Chepkararat, Karisa Sub-county, Amudat District, artisanal gold miners extract the gold and locally sell it to middlemen.
Women look for gold in a rock at Acerere Gold Mining Site in Nakapiripirit District in 2018. Experts say mining affects the quality of the soil. Photo | File
BACKGROUND
Uganda ranks among African countries with the largest number of minerals, with over 50 different types of minerals.
For the majority of these minerals, however, the potential for viable exploitation has not yet been established, especially in the Karamoja sub-region. Uganda’s growth strategy for the FY 2024/2025, according to the Finance ministry, is anchored on mineral development, agro-industrialisation, tourism development, including oil and gas, and technology and innovation.
However, to achieve the USD500 billion economy, the government must, among others, double the size of the Growth Domestic Plan every five years and raise per capita GDP six-fold from the current US$1,146 to about US$7,000 in Financial Year 2039/2040. The trend of illicit mineral trade in the region implies that unless the Energy ministry conducts consultations with artisanal miners to ensure the law is practical and facilitates their formalisation within the mining sector, this could remain an impractical dream.
In the case of gold, for example, production statistics from the Uganda Revenue Authority for the FY 2023/24 recorded 46,551kg of gold imports This gold was reportedly imported from Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, South Africa, Cameroon, and Kenya.
While there are no clear statistics on the gold produced and mined in Uganda. Such discrepancies emphasise the significant threat posed by illicit gold trade and financial flows on the domestic revenue mobilisation efforts of the country. In contrast, UGEITI 2024 data indicates that in the FY 2021-22, only 7,202 Kg of gold out of the 30,664 Kg of exported gold were imported gold.
Because of the wide coverage of high-quality minerals across the country, Mr ThomasTayebwa, deputy speaker of Parliament told delegates at the 13th Annual Mineral Wealth Conference organised by the Energy ministry in Kampala that it was high time the government shifted focus to mineral development.
