Frenzied gold rush sweeps historic town in northern Niger
Tens of thousands of gold diggers are prospecting in precarious conditions
At least 100 men sleep on mats at the bus station in Agadez. They are gold panners, heading for the far north of Niger or returning as gold fever sweeps the country.
Some say a banal incident triggered the rush. “Some people got their car bogged down in sand in the desert. When they cleared it, they found a few nuggets. That was in 2013, near Djado,” says Al Haj Mohammad Sale, a former guide who knows the Sahara well.
“The place was a gully where the wind had swept sand away. So there was only gold,” he adds. “They made three round trips. Once they returned for the third time, everything took off.”
Whether truthful or fanciful, the legend of the Djado, an arid, inhospitable plateau lying below a chain of low mountains, went viral in Niger and other poor neighbouring countries.
Paying for water in gold
Tens of thousands of gold diggers from around Niger, Chad, Sudan and elsewhere are prospecting in precarious conditions, more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) northeast of Agadez, a historic town prized as a UN World Heritage Site.
The most precious commodity in the Djado is water — sometimes paid for in gold nuggets rather than the local currency, CFA francs — but to extract enough gold makes the hardships worthwhile.
“I live very well thanks to the gold I found,” smiles Ebrahim Abu Bakr, who prefers to be called Sidiq. In an electric blue T-shirt and matching Bermuda shorts, the young Nigerien looks chic without being flashy.
Aged 22, Sidiq attended school, but stopped to become a gold prospector before he acquired his high school diploma.
“I have plenty of friends who have diplomas and degrees. They’re in (the southern capital) Niamey, but they don’t have any work,” he says.
“At Djado, there
are
people who will earn one million CFA francs (Dh6,223 or $1,700), two million. They could never have imagined earning that much in a month.”
Staff at the ministry of mines in Niamey said they had “no idea” how much gold was being taken out of the territory, but the amount has proved big enough to make significant changes in Agadez. New houses have mushroomed on the outskirts of the town known as “the gateway to the desert”, which is today a staging post for Africans trying to make their way north as illegal immigrants to Europe.
The number of stores in Agadez selling and mending metal detectors, shovels, wheelbarrows and other supplies is on the rise.