The lure of Bambuk gold

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Abstract
Bambuhu (called Bambouk by the French) was a principal source of the gold that made West Africa famous in the Muslim world north of the Sahara from the tenth century onward—and later among the Europeans. Much of the European activity on the Senegambian coast between the end of the fifteenth and the end of the nineteenth century was attracted by the promise of wealth from the ‘gold mines’ of Bambuhu. (Actually the gold came from alluvial ores near the surface rather than deep, hard-rock mines.) Yet today the Republic of Mali, which includes Bambuhu, neither mines nor exports significant quantities of gold. The gold deposits still exist; but the gold content of the ore is not uniform, and the quantity of ore at one place is not great enough to justify a large investment in extraction plants. The evidence available suggests that gold could formerly be mined by hand only because the opportunity cost of labour was formerly very low in the second half of the dry season. With the increased labour mobility of recent decades, the opportunity cost of mine labour in Bambuhu has risen to the point of making gold mining unprofitable.

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