Regalía Minera – Distribución  Aspectos generales:

This study was undertaken at household and community levels. The ages of all miners interviewed in all the mining districts range from 14-66 years and have been presented in Table 5.6. The average age of the 389 miners is 26, inferring a young workforce involved in the activity. Both the youngest and oldest miners come from the Batouri area. Statistical analyses (one way ANOVA) undertaken showed that there is no significant age variation (p<0.005) among the miners in all 24 communities studied. The age range of the male miners is 14-66 years against 15–55 years for women. These variations show there is no significant relationship (p<0.005) between age and gender, suggesting that ASM in the region is not gender biased and includes a mix of children, women and men in the production chain.

Page | 143 Table 5.6. Age range of the artisanal miners in the mining districts surveyed

Boden- Colomine

Betare -

Oya Batouri Yokadouma

Garoua- Boulai Kette Min 17 16 14 15 16 15 Geometric mean 27 31 27 26 23 24 Median 26 29 25 25 22 21 Std Dev 8 14 13 9 7 10 Max 46 61 66 50 57 61 Range 29 45 52 35 41 46

Source: Author’s fieldwork, 2012/2013

Of the 389 miners interviewed, over 76% of the adult male miners are married. Of these married miners, approximately 82% have one wife and 15% have two or more wives. The size of each household is a function of age and the numbers of wives, hence polygamous households tend to be larger than monogamous settings.

The miners mostly operate in family units, although a good number of them work either for chefs de chantier or hire labourers themselves. The family units are cohesive and extended family settings are a common feature. Anecdotal evidence and participant observation during the study suggest the traditional age for men to get married is 21 and women 16, and this resonates with the responses from the miners. Each family unit is headed by a man. Exposure to western civilization (through television, blockbuster films, radio and the internet) and the challenges of constructing livelihoods were stated during the focus group meetings as reasons why the miners do not opt for large families. This is reflected in the proportion of miners who still practise polygamy (7.9%) and the number of children (average of 3 and standard deviation of 2.55 per miner). 67% of the respondents have 3 children or fewer, however, some of the older miners with 2 or more wives have between 6 and 10 children.

The number of children, their gender and age have a bearing on ASM, as this study suggest. Additionally, the people in this region, as in other regions of the country, recognise extended family members such as in-laws, cousins, nephews, and nieces etc. as part of their dependents. This element of the miners’ culture reflects in the number of dependents each miner has. Correlating this with the number of children, it was observed that some children become miners in their own right from the age of 14, and as a result, are not classed as dependents.

Page | 144 A good understanding of how men and women are differentially involved in, and affected by, ASM and the factors surrounding their engagement in the activity could be an effective way in which projects and policies could be thought through and put in place. This will ensure that men and women have equitable opportunities for participation at all stages of the ASM value chain, as well as access to the benefits of ASM, and that neither men nor women disproportionately bear the risks associated with ASM (World Bank, 2013).

The differential roles performed by men and women in ASM in the study area were explored in the quest to determine access to the resources and opportunities associated with artisanal and small-scale mining. Of the 389 respondents, 35.7% are women. Together with children (under 18), they make up 55% of the total population sampled. Whilst consisting of over 35% of the workforce, women do not own land and other assets in the sector, despite their unrestricted access to land for ASM. The role and perception of women in ASM is deeply rooted in the traditional and cultural values in the mining area. Women and children perform specific tasks such as transporting gold- bearing aggregates and panning. The myth that a woman in a pit will bring bad luck is waning. During the field studies, it was evident that women now access the pits to transport the ore to the grinding/pounding and panning areas. That notwithstanding, women are more involved in other roles in the downstream sector where they engage in the brewing of alcoholic beverages, operation of bars and restaurants, provision stores and in providing services such as mobile internet and telephone airtime credits. There is also evidence of a ‘flourishing’ sex industry in all six districts.

Women in ASM communities have varying degrees of financial autonomy. Contrary to the long established tradition where women are defined as their husbands’ property including their earnings, most female miners in the East Region retain their earnings from ASM. However, there were some exceptions in a number of instances in Garoua- Boulai where some women stated that they offer a proportion of their earnings to their husbands every September to help with school needs of their dependents at the start of the school year. Whilst women participate in most ASM activities in all six districts,

Page | 145 ownership, access to and control of land remains a male dominated affair. Although there is inequality along gender lines as evidenced in the ASM communities in the region, it is a long-standing cultural issue in other sectors such as smallholder farming, and needs to be better understood. However, the focus of my research is how both men and women construct their livelihoods from ASM. As such, I argue that issues such as recognition, formalisation and support need to be prioritised ahead of issues of gender inequalities (Moser et al., 2001) in a sector that is poorly understood by national authorities and donor agencies. This is because ASM in the region is tied into normative understandings of gender, family, home and nation, a moral construct in which boys and girls are put in their places.

The involvement of children in ASM in East Cameroon reflects the general perception and involvement of children in farm and non-farm activities in the country, where there is a very strong bond between girls and their mothers on one hand and boys and their fathers on the other hand. This is perceived by most stakeholders, including the authorities, as good and moral. In most of the camps, children work as part of a family, although some teenage boys are contracted as cheap labour. There are no official statistics on the number of school-aged children who attend school regularly. As shown in Table 5.5 above, the presence of children in mining camps and participation in ASM is a common occurrence in the East Region. Some studies in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Mali [Hilson, 2012], where child labour in ASM communities is attributed to a combination of cultural issues, household poverty and rural livelihood diversification) reaffirms findings of this study.