Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is a significant part of the global mineral economy. In fact, 45 million people across the world work directly in ASM, with estimates indicating as many as 315 million people benefit from the sector indirectly. 

However, a critical challenge is finding ways for small miners to enter the legal mainstream. 

A moving session at Investing in African Mining Indaba 2026 heard emotional accounts of life in the open-pit mines that typify the sector, and debated ways to bring the industry into the formal economy. 

A key question debated on the Mining Indaba stage was whether formalisation could coexist with large-scale mining, and whether governments and regional bodies are doing enough to enable it. 

Ntokozo Nzimande, deputy director-general of mining and petroleum policy development at the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE), shared a deeply personal account of artisanal mining from her childhood in Newcastle, in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. 

While South Africa is known for large-scale, formalised mining, Nzimande acknowledged that the country had been slow to establish regulations for the ASM sector. 

She said the latest amendments to the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act and the new Artisanal Mining Licensing Systemb allowed miners to acquire permits for a small mining tenement for a month-to-month period of three years and options to renew it twice. 

A human reality 

“There is still a need for greater clarity around artisanal mining,” she conceded. “The intention is to regularise these activities and to provide a path for artisanal and small-scale miners to graduate to become junior miners and enter the mining mainstream.” 

She emphasised that ASM is not illegal mining, before sharing a story from her childhood. 

“I grew up in a village called Blaauwbosch Laagte outside Newcastle,” said Nzimande. “Behind the fence at the back of our school was a large pit where the local gogos (grandmothers) would dig for coal. They would sell that coal in the village from 

wheelbarrows, for R10 per load. I know these people whom we describe as artisanal miners. ASM is not academic to me. It’s a lived reality.” 

She said she had dedicated her life to helping to create a space for artisanal miners to play in the mainstream economy. 

Miners’ co-ops 

Popol Mabolia Yenga, MD of Mining Cadastre (CAMI) in the DRC, shared the Congo experience of ASM. He said formalising artisanal and small-scale miners had become necessary when the state-owned body that previously produced all minerals in the country went bankrupt due to mismanagement. 

“After the state company collapsed, experienced miners then had no choice but to resort to their own survival-mining activities. Government had to recognise that situation.” 

The DRC government had created official artisanal mining zones, where many of its millions of artisanal miners now operated. In addition, miners were able to join a miners’ cooperative, which marketed products internationally, and ensured those minerals were traceability compliant. 

Today, those miners are also able to access financial services, purchase life insurance and join retirement funds. 

Market access 

Sharing the voice of the private sector, Norman Mukwakwami, global head of responsible sourcing – metals, for Trafigura, said there were proven examples of how artisanal and small-scale miners could be empowered and connected to global markets. 

He described a responsible sourcing partnership between Trafigura, a commodities trading and logistics company, mining company Chemaf, and the COMIAKOL miners collective, at the Mutoshi mine in Kolwezi, DRC. 

“The partnership has been able to ensure the safe and secure delivery of cobalt to the international market, by working with artisanal miners within the concession,” he said. 

There are estimated to be 14 million artisanal miners in the world, with 10 million in Africa, and around 2-3 million in DRC. 

Mukwakwami said formalising these millions of ASM miners at scale would require greater market clarity to understand export requirements and strong regional partnerships across countries. 

He emphasised that formalising artisanal and small-scale mining was not just about legalisation, but about economic livelihoods. 

Mohammad Stevens, legal counsel for the African Legal Support Facility said artisanal mining was best understood as part of a broader value chain. 

He explained that while the sector needed to be regulated in terms of where miners could work, what tools they could use, and under what conditions, there was also a need to 

equip governments with the legal resources to set policy and negotiate agreements internationally. 

The environmental, health, safety, and socio-economic impacts of ASM activities needed to be understood within legal and policy setting and guidelines needed to be developed to promote gender equality in ASM value-chain development. 

Mining Indaba delegates also raised the issue that even where ASM was formalised, there needed to be security of tenure, and pathways for miners to graduate from artisanal “subsistence” mining into small-scale and junior mining. 

DDG Nzimande highlighted industry successes where large miners and artisanal miners were able to coexist. 

“Where a large mining house finds that a certain concession cannot be developed profitably, it can cede that right to a smaller entity,” she said. “There are also laws to allow ASM miners to graduate to more mechanised methods. There is room for mining operations of all sizes to work alongside each other, and for all of them to earn a living.” 

• Investing in African Mining Indaba 2026 has run from February 9 – 12 at the CTICC in Cape Town.