Artisanal Miners in Western Kenya Move Away From Mercury
KAKAMEGA, Kenya, April 1 (IPS) - They call this land Bushiangala. Gold has been mined here for nearly a century. In 1931, colonial prospectors arrived after traces were found in the nearby Yala River, setting off a rush that changed this quiet corner of western Kenya.
Colonial authorities quickly took control of the boom, introducing mining laws that restricted access, while companies like Rosterman Gold Mines dominated production, employing local labour even as profits flowed out of the region. When industrial operations collapsed in the 1950s, they left behind something more enduring: an informal mining economy that never disappeared.
For more than 70 years, artisanal miners, known locally as ‘wachimba migodi’, have worked these deposits by hand, digging, crushing and washing ore using techniques passed down through generations. Mercury came much later.
Josephine Liabule Mkhobi grew up around the pits. She remembers watching older miners process gold with water and pans.
“Our parents never used mercury,” Mkhobi says. “This method started around 2008.”
Introduced as a faster alternative, mercury quickly took hold, speeding up gold extraction – but leaving behind contamination that has not disappeared.
Over time, water sources across the Lake Victoria region became increasingly unsafe, with mercury in some wells reaching up to ten times the World Health Organization’s guidelines.
The contamination now stretches across a gold-rich belt that includes Kakamega — home to Bushiangala — as well as Vihiga, Siaya, Busia, and Kisumu, reaching toward Migori near the Tanzanian border.
A 2026 study published in Environmental Health found that the water and slurry used in these mining pits contain concentrations of arsenic, chromium, and mercury up to 100 times higher than local surface waters. The researchers warned that miners – and children living nearby – are in direct, frequent contact with these toxic mixtures, which eventually drain into the broader Lake Victoria ecosystem.
Mercury’s Slow Poison
For the miners on the ground, these toxins are no longer a matter of abstract data.
Timothy Mukoshi, a miner, remembers a colleague who slowly began to lose his memory. The man would withdraw money from the bank and later forget where he had put it.
Like many miners here, he often burnt mercury-gold amalgam to separate the metal – a process that releases toxic vapours. After he died, Mukoshi says the cause was clear: a post-mortem found traces of mercury in his brain.
“Mercury is what you call a slow poison,” Mukoshi says.
For years, the risks associated with using mercury in mining went largely unrecognised. Now, Bushiangala is trying something different.
In the same processing sites where women crush ore and wash gold by hand, miners are forming cooperatives and introducing methods that can recover gold without the toxic metal.
Miners say the shift gathered momentum after training initiatives reached the area through the planetGOLD programme — a global initiative backed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with country-level implementation in Kenya by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to reduce mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining.
“The planetGOLD programme stands as our leading initiative to tackle mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining. By helping countries identify, test, and scale up mining and processing techniques, we not only support improved gold recovery but also empower miners to transition away from mercury use,” says Anil Bruce Sookdeo, Chemicals and Waste Coordinator and Senior Environmental Specialist at the GEF.
“Our approach is comprehensive – we facilitate sector formalisation, broaden access to financing for technology upgrades, and connect miners to formal and more reliable gold supply chains. When cleaner technologies are economically viable, financing is accessible, and there’s a dependable market for their gold, miners are much more likely to adopt mercury-free methods,” Sookdeo added.
Bringing Artisinal Miners Out of the Shadows
The planetGOLD Kenya project, locally known as IMKA, is partnering with the Ministry of Mining and the Ministry of Environment to tackle the root cause of the mercury crisis: informality. By bringing miners out of the shadows and into legal cooperatives, the project aims to replace toxic shortcuts with formal, mercury-free systems.
“At first, many miners were afraid of joining cooperatives,” says Mkhobi, the chairlady of the Bushiangala Women’s Mining Cooperative. “They thought it meant losing their money or being forced into something they didn’t understand. But after they understood the benefits, more people started joining.”
Kakamega currently has 24 registered mining cooperatives spread across several gold-producing sub-counties. Small welfare groups were brought together into registered cooperatives, creating a structure through which miners could access training, equipment, and formal recognition under the Mining Act of 2016.
A Capful of Mercury Replaced by Mechanical Processing
Mechanical processing systems are replacing mercury inside the cooperatives. Miners who once relied on a capful of mercury are now learning to master gravity concentrators and shaking tables – mechanical systems that use physical force, rather than toxic chemicals, to pull gold from the dust.
At Bushiangala, a mercury-free demonstration plant now serves as a training ground for miners to practise using the new system under supervision. Technical manuals that once existed only as engineering documents are being translated into practical steps that can be applied directly in the pits.
Training sessions are conducted by technical staff from the planetGOLD programme alongside regional mining officers and cooperative leaders, combining engineering guidance with the practical knowledge miners already bring from the pits.
Oversight of the site is handled through a Joint Implementation Committee that brings together national regulators, county governments and representatives from mining communities.
By providing land and routine supervision, county governments are gradually assuming greater responsibility for the sector — an arrangement designed to ensure the effort continues even after international partners step back.
Convine Omondi, the project’s chief technical adviser, said in a 2025 planetGOLD report that involving local authorities directly helps turn what began as a donor-supported initiative into something managed and sustained at the local level.
The training materials and tools being tested here are part of a wider effort under the planetGOLD programme to share lessons between countries. Experiences from Kenya are being documented and adapted for use in other artisanal mining regions, rather than copied wholesale.
As of early 2026, Kenya had identified six demonstration sites across Kakamega, Vihiga, Migori and Narok. Fencing and sheds have already been completed, and the sites are now entering the commissioning phase. Delivery of heavy equipment and full operation are expected later this year.
Even so, progress is gradual. A site is only considered fully operational once the machinery is installed, utilities such as water and electricity are reliable, and certified cooperatives are actively using the facilities.
“First we were sensitised about how hazardous mercury is,” says Mukoshi, who has worked the Kakamega gold fields since the late 1990s and now chairs the Kakamega Miners Cooperative Union. “People realised it is dangerous. Now many sites keep registers, and miners are also learning that when you mine, you must rehabilitate the land.”
Healing the Land, Working Together
This focus on healing the land has spread beyond Kakamega. In neighbouring Vihiga County, the shift toward environmental restoration is being led by women who see the forest’s health as inseparable from their own.
“The training also introduced environmental rehabilitation, encouraging miners to restore excavated land once extraction ends,” says Shebby Kendi, chair of the Elwunza Women Cooperative Society.
But for Mkhobi, the change is not only about soil or chemicals. It is also about bargaining power. By moving from scattered pits to organised cooperatives, miners are beginning to act collectively in a trade where individuals have little influence.
“Now through the training we are learning how to organise ourselves, keep records and work as cooperatives,” Mkhobi says. “When we come together, we have more strength in the market.”
In a region where gold prices are often dictated by middlemen, that collective strength is beginning to shift how miners negotiate.
Giving Women Voice
“When you are one woman with a gram of gold, you have no voice,” she says. “When there are a hundred of you with a kilo, the buyers have to listen.”
For Anthony Munanga, Kakamega’s county director for environment, natural resources and climate change, that “kilo” also represents something else: control. At a recent media engagement, he said that without organised cooperatives, the gold economy remains largely invisible to regulators.
“Without organisation, there is no way to ensure compliance,” Munanga says. His department is now mapping mining areas across the county, an effort aimed at moving miners out of scattered pits and into designated zones where licensing and environmental oversight become possible.
“This process allows miners to operate safely and legally,” he says.
Changing Face of Financial Support
But legal recognition requires more than a map. It requires financing — and the local banking system is still reluctant to lend to a sector long defined by risk.
Changing how gold is produced also means rethinking how the trade is financed. In Bushiangala, this is where the constraints begin to show.
The planetGOLD programme in Kenya was launched with relatively modest public funding, despite ambitions that stretch far beyond its initial budget. At its core is a USD 4.24 million grant from the Global Environment Facility, much of which has already been allocated.
The grant has largely supported technical assistance — including miner training, policy development and institutional systems designed to formalise the sector — rather than directly financing mining equipment.
Project documents estimate the programme could mobilise up to USD 26 million in additional financing from commercial lenders and private investors to support new processing plants and upgraded mining infrastructure.
In practice, that funding has been slow to materialise.
Although the project was backed by USD 16.6 million in co-financing from government and local partners, a 2023 mid-term review found that much of this support existed on paper as in-kind contributions rather than cash available for day-to-day operations. It also pointed to delays within government financial systems and the lack of a risk-sharing mechanism to draw in private lenders, factors that have slowed implementation on the ground.
A final evaluation due in 2026 is expected to assess how far the programme has managed to address these gaps and whether it can sustain its operations over the long term.
Several structural constraints help explain the shortfall.
A government moratorium on new mining licences between 2019 and 2023 froze formalisation during a critical phase of the project. Without licences, miners could not meet standard lending requirements, and commercial banks have been reluctant to lend to what remains a largely informal sector.
Even where discussions with lenders progress, approval processes within banks can take more than a year, often outlasting key phases of the programme.
The absence of a dedicated risk-sharing mechanism has also limited participation. Without a first-loss guarantee to absorb potential defaults, lenders had little incentive to finance investments in artisanal mining.
The COVID-19 pandemic slowed procurement and field operations, but programme assessments suggest that the deeper barriers were structural — particularly the shortage of licensed miners eligible for credit and the lack of financial instruments tailored to the sector.
As a result, the programme has made measurable progress in training miners and organising them into cooperatives, but access to capital remains constrained.
Harry Kimtai, principal secretary at Kenya’s Ministry of Mining, describes the sequencing as deliberate, arguing that formalisation must come first before significant private investment can enter the sector.
Lag Between Training and Implementation
For those on the front lines, that “deliberate sequencing” feels like a race against their own health. Merab Khamonya, a 28-year-old mother who joined the Bushiangala cooperative in 2024, is one of those caught in the lag between training and implementation.
Though she has attended planetGOLD sessions and understands the neurotoxicity of the metal she handles, her reality remains unchanged. To support her family, she still submerges her bare hands in basins of ore and mercury—a necessity for survival.
“I feel things moving inside my eyes,” she says, describing a persistent, painful irritation. “I know it harms me. I even see traces of it on my clothes when I go home to cook for my children.”
For Khamonya, the promise of a mercury-free mechanical system is a lifeline that has yet to arrive. “We are ready for the shift,” she says, “but for now, we have no other way to clean the gold. We are just waiting for the machines.”
Benefits of Mercury-Free Mechanical Systems
The economics behind the shift are straightforward. Kenya’s 2022 National Action Plan on artisanal and small-scale gold mining estimates that traditional manual methods recover only about 20 per cent of the gold in the ore. By comparison, data from planetGOLD Kenya shows that mercury-free mechanical systems can recover up to 90 per cent—potentially increasing the amount of gold recovered from each load of ore.
Miners involved in the programme say they are cautiously optimistic. They understand the problems and the solutions needed and feel best placed to judge what works on the ground.
“We have seen the difference and learned about mercury-free alternatives,” Mukoshi says. “We are ready to make the shift.”
But the obstacles, he adds, are basic.
“For these sites to work, you need water and electricity. Many of them don’t have either.”
For Mukoshi, Mkhobi, Kendi, Khamonya and their colleagues, the work has shifted to practicalities – securing water and electricity, preparing sites, and waiting on machines. The early experiments are over; what remains is making the system function.
On most days, that means clearing land, assembling equipment and negotiating with miners who are still uncertain about abandoning the mercury methods they have relied on for years.
The change taking shape in Bushiangala is small for now — one processing site, one cooperative, a handful of machines. But the model is already drawing attention beyond Kakamega.
planetGold’s Global Reach
In various places in Africa, governments and development agencies are searching for ways to formalise artisanal gold mining without destroying the environments where it takes place. In the Congo Basin’s Cuvette Centrale, UNEP and the planetGOLD programme are supporting a USD 10.5 million initiative aimed at protecting one of the world’s largest tropical peatland systems from mining damage.
The region spans about 167,600 square kilometres of peatlands and stores an estimated 29 billion tonnes of carbon — roughly three years of global emissions. GEF project data suggests the effort is designed to keep gold production from driving damage in a peat swamp that is crucial to climate stability.
In Zimbabwe, a parallel programme has begun introducing mercury-free processing technologies across dozens of mining sites. The effort here is more centralised, tied to the state-run Fidelity Gold Refinery and legislative reforms under the Mines and Minerals Bill.
Kenya’s system, by contrast, relies on cooperative structures at mine sites with county-level oversight through Joint Implementation Committees (JICs) and national regulation under the Mining Act — a model the African Development Bank is using as a reference point, particularly its JIC structure, for scaling mercury-free artisanal mining across the continent.
Kenya’s Experience Now a Guideline For Africa, World Expansion
According to Ludovic Bernaudat, head of the chemicals and green chemistry unit at UNEP, Kenya’s experience is now being used to guide the next phase of the programme as it expands across Africa.
He describes the country as one of the original eight members now completing its first implementation cycle – a milestone for the global initiative.
“New countries in Africa have recently joined the programme, and through the global project, UNEP will make sure that connection is made with Kenya,” Bernaudat said.
He added that the Kenyan model will be featured at the 2026 planetGOLD Global Forum in Panama, where nations share technical expertise and compare approaches to ending mercury use.
Since its launch, planetGOLD has expanded from nine to 27 countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
“This growth demonstrates both the scale of the challenge and the value of a programme that integrates environmental action with support for livelihoods, inclusion, and market transformation,” says Anil Bruce Sookdeo, from the GEF.
But the final proof will depend less on policy design than on whether miners themselves decide it works.
Chasing Thin Seams of Gold Safely
Back in Bushiangala, that test is only beginning.
Miners still arrive at the pits each morning as they always have, chasing thin seams of gold buried in the red earth. What is changing — slowly — is what happens after the ore reaches the surface.
If the new system holds, the mercury that once flowed through these streams may eventually disappear. And the miners here, in this corner of western Kenya, will find a way to keep working the land without the risks that have defined it for years.
Note: This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.
Inter Press Service (IPS) UN Bureau Report
© Inter Press Service (20260401160209) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service