Africa Mining Watch

Africa Mining Watch

Mapping the spread of illegal mining across Africa
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Africa Mining Watch
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A first satellite sweep of 13 countries in West Africa and the Congo Basin found mining scars in all of them.

123,541mining detections
Each one is a cell of about 320 m — roughly 10.2 hectares — where the models found bare, mined-looking ground.
615districts carry detections
About one in six of the 3,587 administrative areas surveyed, and they turn up in every one of the 13 countries.
54%of it sits in 20 districts
The activity is not spread evenly. Over half of everything the survey found falls inside twenty administrative areas.
1 in 13detections is on protected land
More than 150 protected areas carry detected mining — forest reserves, Ramsar wetlands and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, a World Heritage site, among them.

How to read these numbers. They come from Earth Index models reading satellite imagery to June 2026, across 6,079,621 km² of West Africa and the Congo Basin. A detection is disturbed ground that looks like mining from orbit — it is not a register of mines, it carries no date, and it does not separate licensed operations from illegal ones. Quarries, cleared farmland and abandoned workings can look alike from above. Explore the map and the underlying tables below.

Access our data

This data is a rough cut, produced by a collection of machine learning models in Earth Index based on research initiated at the Africa Mining Watch Mapathon. You can access the data here. The map broadly reflects the state of artisanal mining activity in West Africa and the Congo Basin.

Though it is not the focus of the survey, the data captures some industrial mining facilities, and it includes errors both in false detections and mining sites missed. We recommend using the data primarily for exploration of mining hotspots and to validate findings independently.

Mining detection · one ~320 m cell
Countries in survey

Where mining meets protected land

9,828 detections — 8% of everything the survey found — fall inside a protected area. They are spread across 200 of the 1,941 protected areas in the surveyed countries: forest reserves, Ramsar wetlands, national parks and World Heritage sites. Sort by any column, or narrow to one country or one kind of designation.

200 protected areas

Protected areas ranked by detections
RankProtected area
1Réserve partielle de faune de kankanRamsar Site · Guinea · since 20023,13223,294 ha 1.4%
2Oda RiverForest Reserve · Ghana · since 19399886,449 ha 38.3%
3Niger-Niandan-MiloRamsar Site · Guinea · since 20027536,005 ha 0.4%
4Upper WassawForest Reserve · Ghana · since 19257144,578 ha 33.6%
5ApampramaForest Reserve · Ghana · since 19523652,113 ha 57.0%
6Réserve de faune à okapisWorld Heritage Site · DR Congo · since 19962691,896 ha 0.1%
7OkapisWildlife Reserve · DR Congo · since 19922691,896 ha 0.1%
8IssiaClassified Forest · Côte d'Ivoire2291,839 ha 2.8%
9TanoeClassified Forest · Côte d'Ivoire2201,336 ha 4.0%
10Classified Forest Name Unknown (CIV) No.16Classified Forest · Côte d'Ivoire2131,734 ha 1.2%
11Subin ShelterbeltForest Reserve · Ghana · since 19401931,202 ha 49.9%
12Neung SouthForest Reserve · Ghana · since 19541921,443 ha 11.0%
13TinkissoRamsar Site · Guinea · since 20021881,443 ha 0.1%
14Bia TawyaForest Reserve · Ghana · since 19651841,378 ha 2.5%
15Fure RiverForest Reserve · Ghana · since 1939130880 ha 5.5%
16Bonsa RiverForest Reserve · Ghana · since 1932120914 ha 5.6%
17Anhwiaso EastForest Reserve · Ghana · since 1926117801 ha 6.5%
18Tano NimriForest Reserve · Ghana · since 193577595 ha 2.9%
19Asenanyo RiverForest Reserve · Ghana · since 193875529 ha 2.0%
20Subri RiverForest Reserve · Ghana · since 194974633 ha 1.1%
21ManzanClassified Forest · Côte d'Ivoire73548 ha 3.9%
22Supuma ShelterbeltForest Reserve · Ghana · since 193867469 ha 17.3%
23Bili-UereHunting Area · DR Congo · since 197465534 ha <0.1%
24FarangbaiaForest Reserve · Sierra Leone · since 194862522 ha 2.3%
25DiambarakrouClassified Forest · Côte d'Ivoire57420 ha 1.0%

Bars are scaled to the largest site in the current view and follow whichever column is sorted, so they compare like with like. Ranking by detections favours the largest sites: Kankan is 16,494 km² and 1.4% affected, while Oda River is 168 km² and over a third mined — the share of the site column is the one that separates them. Where designations overlap, a detection is credited to each boundary that contains it but counted once in the total, so the detections column sums to 10,280 rather than 9,828. Proposed sites, marine areas, UNESCO-MAB biosphere reserves and protected areas recorded only as a point rather than a boundary are left out. Hectares are the dissolved ground the detection cells cover, so they are an upper bound on disturbance rather than a measure of mined ground. Protected areas from the World Database on Protected Areas. Analysis by Code for Africa and Earth Genome (CC BY 4.0).

THE PROBLEM
Illegal and unregulated mining operations across Africa cause devastating damage to the environment and human health, destroying forests, contaminating water sources, and displacing communities. Yet the sheer scale and variety of the continent’s geology makes monitoring these activities nearly impossible with traditional methods.
THE SOLUTION
Africa Mining Watch is changing that. By combining accessible cutting-edge AI with satellite imagery, we’re collectively building the first comprehensive, open dataset of illegal mining activity across Africa to make the invisible visible and putting actionable data in the hands of journalists, researchers, and policymakers.
HOW IT WORKS
1. Scan
Earth Index processes satellite imagery across targeted regions of Africa, analyzing multispectral data to detect surface-level changes invisible to the human eye.
2. Detect
Multiple AI models are trained to identify different types of mining operations across diverse landscapes, from artisanal mining to large-scale industrial extraction.
3. Synthesize
Individual model outputs are combined into one unified dataset, validated against ground-truth data and expert knowledge to ensure accuracy and completeness.
4. Act
The resulting open dataset powers conservation projects, investigative journalism, policy advocacy, community action, and environmental enforcement across the continent.
Code for Africa

Africa Mining Watch Mapathon

We hosted a mapathon in April 2026. This was a chance to work with our data and help us build out the project. Participants worked with Deep Search, a new feature of Earth Index designed to super-charge search results.
Africa Mining Watch

African Mining Watch Knowledge Toolkit

Get a deep dive into mining across Africa and explore the environmental and social impacts of illegal mining. This toolkit is a collection of resources and tools to help you understand the root of the issues.
Amazon Mining Watch

From the team behind Amazon Mining Watch

The team at Earth Genome has extensive experience in mining and environmental monitoring in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center and Amazon Conservation Association, having worked on the Amazon Mining Watch project for years. We're excited to bring the lessons we've learned to another continent.
Amazon Mining Watch