ASGM Miners
The challenge of estimating the number of artisanal gold miners globally is complicated by the activity being largely undocumented. In addition, there is a lack of standardisation in terms and definitions. Finally some zones miners are not just producing gold, but also other commodities.
PMM estimates that the number of artisanal gold miners globally is somewhere in the range of 10m-15m. These figures are determined taking the following approach:
- counting only individuals producing gold by hand as artisanal
- individuals are counted on a “full time” basis, as if they are producing gold all year round, so where mining is seasonal, the numbers might be greater, but for a shorter time.
- do not count workers in the supporting asmg infrastructure (i.e. count only miners)
- unless there is a gold rush environment, artisanal gold miners only live within a single ASM Zone or within a single country, if that country spans several ASM Zones (like Colombia which is included in both Andes and Amazon zones).
Africa contains the largest number of artisanal gold miners, at least 6 million. Both South America and Asia (excluding China) roughly equal, having about a 1.5 to 2 million artisanal miners each. North America, Oceania and Europe have relatively few artisanal miners, while Antarctica has none at all.
Small scale miners are by definition neither artisanal nor large scale miners. Small scale miners are very often working in the same zone as artisanal miners. The absolute number of small scale miners is, relative to the number of artisanal miners, very small.
ASMG Countries
Africa is by far the largest producer of artisanal and small scale mined gold. The table below shows the estimated gold ounces by country.