• Kakamega county has over 15,000 small-scale miners engaged in artisanal mining, largely in Ikolomani and Shinyalu subcounties.
• A gramme of gold goes for between Sh4,800 and Sh5,200.
Small-scale gold miners in Kakamega are upbeat that the establishment of a Sh1.5 billion refinery in the county will be a game-changer.
President Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to launch the construction of the Kakamega County Gold Refinery in Litambitsa, Ikolomani subcounty, on August 9.
The miners are hopeful that the gold refinery will help regulate prices, create direct and indirect employment opportunities and end smuggling of the mineral out of Kenya.
Kakamega county has over 15,000 small-scale miners engaged in artisanal mining in Ikolomani and Shinyalu subcounties.
The refinery will be the first of its kind and once completed, it will process gold from across the country.
“The refinery is an idea that is long overdue. It will help the government to know the exact amount of gold being produced in the country and fix issues of price,” Kakamega County Small-scale Miners Association chairman Saleh Mukoshi said.
He said once the refinery is set up, there should be clear structures for collecting gold from miners to cut out middlemen.
“Miners should be put in clusters and form cooperatives as intermediaries between them and the factory to avoid exploitation by brokers. This will also provide revenue through which the miners can access credit facilities for economic growth,” Mukoshi said.
He said that differences in the rates of royalties between Kenya and her neighbouring countries encourage the smuggling of gold.
“People find it easier to export gold through Uganda than Kenya because charges are higher in Kenya,” Mukoshi said.
“If you want to export one kilo of gold, it will cost you Sh220,000 in Kenya while in Uganda it will cost less than Sh100,000. In Kenya, royalty is at two per cent, while in Uganda it's 0.5 per cent.”
A gramme of gold goes for between Sh4,800 and Sh5,200.
He said the government should build the capacity of miners because “you can’t expect to sustain a refinery when people within the sector are operating informally”.
Resident George Mbwabi said miners should be engaged to provide labour at the factory.
“We are certain the refinery will help improve the price of gold. Mining is a labour-intensive exercise. Miners must be made to feel ownership of the factory. It should not be like sugarcane farming where the farmers were ignored,” Mbwabi said.
Ikolomani MP Bernard Shinali said the refinery will partly address the challenges of unemployment, make artisanal mining more profitable and regulate the gold business.
“The refinery will receive gold from across the country, purify, grade and brand it before it is exported. This will also increase revenue for both national and county governments in terms of royalties and taxes,” he said.
Currently, anybody can export gold as long as he or she is issued with a dealership licence.
Shinali said residents will now know how much gold was mined from their areas and what royalties they are entitled to.
The legislator said the lack of a refinery has led to mushrooming of gold mining plants, whose operators are exploiting artisanal miners.
“The local miners only get 30 per cent of the gold from the mountains of soils they excavate. The remaining 70 per cent is extracted by those leaching soil who do not participate in excavation,” he said.
Large-scale gold mining in western Kenya could start next year after exploration firm, Shanta Gold, identified deposits at seven different intersections in Kakamega.
Shanta puts the deposits at 1.31 million ounces valued at Sh164 billion and expects the mining period to last approximately 10 years.
The firm is exploring gold along the Lihranda Corridor in Isulu and Bushiangala in Ikolomani.
In 2015, Acacia Mining Company, which was exploring the mineral in the Lihranda Corridor, announced the discovery of 1.31 million ounces of gold at 12.1 grammes per tonne.
It however said the discovery was not economically viable and said it hoped to increase the discovery to two million ounces in two years.
The Kakamega gold rush in Kakamega started in early 1930. Geologist Albert Ernest Kitson, in his report for the Colonial Office, suggested that possibly as much as half of the gold being prospected was wasted by amateur techniques.
Meanwhile, a team from the Kakamega county government has planned visits to gold mining sites in the region to come up with a report on safety guidelines.
This is expected to culminate in the mapping of mining sites, which are potential death traps for thousands of artisanal miners who depend on the activity for a livelihood.
Mineral production and value addition county director Evans Masachi said the team will hand over the report to the Geological Society of Kenya to undertake the mapping exercise.
A number of miners have in the past died when mines collapse. Others died due to suffocation in the mines.
Edited by A.N