The search for gold is a dangerous and laborious gamble for Sudan’s miners
As Sudan’s war destroys livelihoods, the death of 16-year-old Altayeb Alhadi highlights dangers of artisanal mining.
When Altayeb Alhadi was just six years old, his father died after a well collapsed in his village in White Nile state, south-central Sudan. Two months later, and his mother also died, leaving the five children in the family as orphans. As the eldest of the siblings, it was Altayeb’s responsibility to find work and help the family survive.
At 14, he travelled hundreds of kilometres from his home in Galli village to seek work in the north, where gold mines dot the landscape, so he could feed his siblings and keep them in school.
“We warned him about the dangers, but he was ambitious. Some relatives were already working in the area although they had found jobs in restaurants and other services rather than underground extraction,” Ayateb’s uncle Alhadi Hamid told Al Jazeera.
Since a civil war between Sudan’s military and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group broke out in 2023, the economy has tanked and forced thousands with no other source of income to find work in the artisanal gold mines of northern Sudan.