Keyword: gold mining

Price rises fuel new gold rush in Africa

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A gold mine in Nigeria in December 2019. © Kola Sulaimon/AFP A gold mine in Nigeria in December 2019. © Kola Sulaimon/AFP

Around a quarter of the world's gold production is in Africa and extraction of the precious metal has been been stepped up as its price on world markets has increased. But a significant proportion of this mining is carried out illegally by small-scale miners and much of the gold then finds its way into the hands of criminal and armed groups across the continent before being sold in the Middle East. Fanny Pigeaud reports on attempts to clean up the sector through stronger regulations.

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Despite Macron's pleas over Amazon, French Guiana faces its own forest threats

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An unauthorised gold-prospecting site in operation in 2017 in French Guiana. © Parc Amazonien de Guyane An unauthorised gold-prospecting site in operation in 2017 in French Guiana. © Parc Amazonien de Guyane

For many years, French leaders have liked to pose on the international scene as potential saviours of the Amazon, as we have just witnessed at the recent G7 summit in Biarritz with the diplomatic spat between President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro over forest fires. President François Mitterrand started the trend back at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. But alongside the diplomatic posturing there is also the reality of what is happening in French Guiana, an overseas region of France that lies just to the north-east of the Amazon rainforest. As Marion Briswalter reports from Cayenne in Guiana, what is happening on the ground in this French corner of South America reflects less well on Paris's stewardship of the environment.