Gold and African Industrialisation: Between an Economic Rock and a Political Hard Place

This chapter considers two options that could potentially provide employment benefits for African workers, namely: the downstream processing into jewellery and, the upstream production of capital goods and intermediate inputs into the gold mining sector. Coupled with a large number of mines becoming marginal, and with the prevalence of economies of scale, African policy makers and leaders have said that they wish to create employment by trying to lever their gold resources in such a way as to attain greater value addition through beneficiation. Beneficiation i.e. the creation of forward linkages or simply put e.g. the transformation of gold into gold jewellery. This objective is very much at the heart of political and aspirational documents of African leaders such as the African Mining Vision as well as regional industrial policies. It should however be noted that the world’s biggest producers of jewellery are India and China. And for the former there are almost no mineral resources. The most important and tangible driving force for African countries in terms of gold beneficiation is the 4.3 million Indian citizens employed in the production of jewellery (which includes gold, diamonds and other metals and gems). In many cases these Indian producers are making use of gems and precious metals coming from African countries as the country has few operating mines producing these commodities. While beneficiation is potentially the most beneficial in terms of possible employment creation, it is the least commercially propitious.