THERE is rather startling news from Mali, a vast West African country whose fame in history is rooted in gold trading. This is the case, though it was Ghana rather than itself that took the greater fame.

The news is that there will be no new artisanal mining permits to foreigners, this after a couple of accidents in recent weeks left dozens dead.

All this was blamed on artisanal miners apparently having pushed their luck too far, with commercial or large-scale producers reportedly having taken the precautions scientific mining demands.

Reports say the latest incident of mine collapse occurred this February 15 in an artisanal gold mine, leaving 43 people dead.

Surprisingly, reports said most of those killed were women, showing a somewhat desperate social situation where women take risks going into dangerous mine pits.

Earlier, on January 29, it was 13 artisanal miners –including women and three children – who died in southwest Mali after the flooding of a tunnel in which they were digging for gold.

The two incidents pushed the country’s authorities to push for policy change, a rare but persistent situation.

There were officials to be blame for issuing mining permits to those areas, this amidst suggestions that those holding the permits were foreign nationals.

One proposition was that some prescriptions on precautions were disregarded, an example relating to proceeding with operations with rain falling.

We had similar problems in a different context when the government called for a review of shoddy contractual or non-contractual relationships between major foreign construction firms and local employees or, more accurately, hired labourers.

These incidents are reminiscent of perennial issues of sporadic defaults in some African countries on the use their resources to develop.

Examples include having women and children die in poorly designed artisanal mine units in desperate efforts to eke out a living.

What fails Africa is basically that foreign companies are licensed to work in gold mining while the state authorities “compensate” the local people.

In countries which recognize land as private property in earnest, the local people would rather sell land as a “gold-bearing” natural resource instead of settling for paltry “compensation” only for fruit trees, iron-roofed houses, etc.

Alternatively they, would demand being allocated shares as individuals or families when surrendering their land to miners and other developers or investors.