1.1 Methodology
A mercury trade diagnostic for Sub-Saharan Africa has been developed by combining information from various sources into an overview of the quantities traded, trade routes, origin of mercury, use of mercury, actors in the value chain, price trends, etc. The available data on mercury supply and mercury consumption for ASGM and other applications in the region are incomplete and sometimes even contradictory, and in the analysis the most likely model and most likely estimates have been developed considering the various available information sources.
In order to obtain a deeper understanding of the trade flows and the actors in the value chains, a more de-tailed analysis has been undertaken in eight participat-ing countries. By combinparticipat-ing the information from the eight countries with a questionnaire and existing infor-mation from other countries involved in mercury trade and ASGM, the data from the participating countries have been used for extrapolation to the entire region.
1.1.1 Databases and existing surveys and tools
UN Comtrade database - Data on import and export have been retrieved from the UN Comtrade database at http://comtrade.un.org/data/. In order to be able to ex-tract large data sets, a license was purchased. Data are extracted for the commodity codes for mercury, mercu-ry compounds and amalgams, mercumercu-ry-added products and gold (see specific commodity codes in the relevant sections and appendixes). Some of the detailed data
are presented explicitly in this report e.g. in the appen-dices, whereas for other data only calculated aggregat-ed data are presentaggregat-ed. For import of mercury, both im-port data as registered by the receiver countries in the region and export data to the countries in the region, as registered by partner countries, has been retrieved and compared. Additionally, in order to further analyze the origin of mercury ending up in Sub-Saharan Africa, data for major global export countries for mercury have been analyzed.
Global Mercury Assessment 2013 (AMAP/UNEP, 2013) - The Global Mercury Assessment 2013 (GMA) provides estimates for the use of mercury for ASGM for more than 30 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2010.
For those countries where newer or more detailed in-formation has not been available for a re-evaluation of the estimated quantities, the estimates of the GMA were used here as best estimate. Furthermore, select-ed data on the use of mercury in mercury-addselect-ed prod-ucts and mercury releases were derived from the GMA.
UNEP Mercury Toolkit (UNEP, 2005a) - The possible import/export of mercury in mercury-added products has been estimated by combining data on trade of the products and default input factors from the UNEP Mer-cury Toolkit. The toolkit includes default factors for mercury content of various products. For certain mercu-ry-added products, the toolkit provides default factors for various mercury-added products on a per-capita basis, which were combined with other country-specific data (on dental health care and electrification rate) to
yield estimates for mercury consumption in each coun-try.
US Geological Survey Minerals Yearbook - The Min-erals Yearbook from the US Geological Survey for each of the countries in the region has been reviewed in or-der to extract information on gold production by ASGM and total gold production in each country.
1.1.2 Data collection in participating countries
The following countries have participated in the project:
Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, DR Congo, Ghana, Sene-gal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
In each of the countries, data have been collected in cooperation between a local specialist and an interna-tional specialist, who visited the country during an in-ception mission and a field training/data collection mis-sion.
Contact to authorities - Meetings have been under-taken in all countries with ministries responsible for en-vironmental protection and mining activities, respective-ly. Furthermore, data on import of mercury have been obtained from customs authorities. Detailed data on import by licensed companies have furthermore been obtained from Ghana, Senegal and Zimbabwe.
Contact to miners' organizations - In all countries, ASM miners' organizations have been contacted and meetings have been held with most of the organiza-tions. A list of contacted organizations is included in Appendix 6. The organizations were requested to pro-vide information on organization of the sector in the country, applied methods, number of miners, mercury use, mercury trade and value chains, etc.
Field investigations - During field investigations to a limited number of sample sites in the participating coun-tries, information on mercury use and trade was col-lected by conducting interviews with ASGM miners, mercury brokers and traders, and gold buyers and traders. The information was recorded in interview re-ports. The published report does not include infor-mation which may be associated with specific inform-ants (names and locations), but this information is known to the main authors of the report.
Situations differ among mining sites and countries.
Based on the detailed information, some general pat-terns were identified, but in order to illustrate the
varia-tion, some detailed cases are described from the differ-ent countries.
1.1.3 Other collection of trade data
In addition to data collection in the eight participating countries, data have been collected through direct en-quiry to mercury importers and dealers in South Africa, Kenya and Togo, which are the major mercury import-ing countries that also export (mainly informally) mercu-ry to other countries in the region. In Kenya and Togo, the project has not been successful in identifying the major importing companies.
1.1.4 Questionnaire
A short questionnaire was developed and sent to the countries in the region (see Appendix 7). The question-naire was kept short, focusing on the main issues for this study, with the aim of obtaining a high response rate.
1.1.5 Co-ordination with other trade analyses
Data on the international trade of mercury have been exchanged with Mr. Peter Maxson (Concorde East/West), who is currently undertaking analyses of international trade of mercury. Furthermore, information has been exchanged with Morgane Fritz, University of Graz, working on a PhD on the mercury and gold value chains.
1.1.6 Other literature
Workshop reports and literature on ASGM in Sub-Saharan Africa, including various reports from the Global Mercury Project (GMP), have been reviewed in order to extract information on mercury trade, mercury quantities used, value chain of mercury and gold, trend in the use of mercury, number of ASGM miners, etc.
Among other applications, this information has been used to re-evaluate the quantities of mercury used in the different countries in the region.
1.1.7 Uncertainties
All data available are subject to uncertainty. The uncer-tainties of estimated quantities are in this study indicat-ed by use of ranges. The ranges are considerindicat-ed as the ranges within which the "true" values are to be found with a 90% certainty. Therefore, for some of the esti-mates the "true" value may be outside the estimated range.
1.2 Countries addressed by the study
The study addresses all countries in Sub-Saharan Afri-ca. According to the UN regional groupings, Sub-Saharan Africa consists of the countries listed below.
The countries of this region are divided into sub-regions by the UN as shown on the map below. The names of the sub-regions are used in this report in the discussion of overall trade flows. Note that one of the countries in Northern Africa, Sudan, is included in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, and consequently within the scope of this study.
Northern Africa: Sudan
Western Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,
Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, Senegal, Sierra Leo-ne, Togo;
Central Africa: Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe;
Eastern Africa: Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Ma-yotte, Mozambique, Réunion, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe;
Southern Africa: Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland.
Figure 1.1
UN sub-regions of Africa.
Source: Wikipedia