The Janus-faced nature of gold panning in Côte d’Ivoire: Between relative prosperity and human insecurity

This study is based on a qualitative method and semi-structured interviews. It presents an overview of illegal gold panning in Côte d’Ivoire. Gold panning, which has been practised intensively for two decades, appears to be irrepressibly linked to ills, with its trail of community conflicts, environmental pollution, and the high risk of collusion between miners and terrorists. However, contrary to popular notions, in a rural context marked by the impoverishment of the population, illegal gold panning, although repressed by the public authorities, appears to be a real “economic windfall”: subject to community governance, it is a source of (negative) peace and even relative prosperity.