Editor’s Note
This article offers a stark glimpse into the perilous and unregulated world of artisanal sapphire mining in Madagascar, where miners risk their lives in a desperate search for fortune.
Suspended from a fragile wooden structure, a figure smeared with yellow earth disappears underground, “armed” with a crowbar, a simple shovel, and a headlamp. In Madagascar, the hunt for sapphires is a jungle that obeys no laws.
On this arid plain in the southwest of the Great Island, hundreds of holes just wide enough for a man give the landscape the appearance of a war zone. Miners bring up kilograms of rubble in a continuous ballet.
Around them, children run and women cook under makeshift shelters, all under the watchful eye of a few men who have come to monitor the site with their hunting rifles. In Betsinefe, “Germinal” meets “Mad Max.”
Last month, activity at this informal mine was suspended by authorities after clashes between villagers and miners who had come from other parts of the country to try their luck.
Albert Soja struggles back to the surface. Like most miners, he receives no salary for his journeys into the bowels of the earth. Only the rare precious stones he finds earn him a few dozen euros each.
Lacking sapphires to sell, his “pay” amounts to a few portions of rice or cassava provided by one of his “bosses.” Often of Sri Lankan origin, they own the precious stone shops in the nearby town of Sakaraha.
Behind his desk overlooking the street, Sunil W.J., one of these “bosses,” scrutinizes with a small flashlight the latest blue, pink, or light yellow sapphires bought from the miners.
His two armed guards make the rounds of the surrounding pits to “collect stones” and pay for the miners’ food. The best ones are sent to Sri Lanka to be “polished, cut, and sold,” Sunil recounts in broken English.
The trade is lucrative. For a sapphire sold in Sri Lanka for $300, he pays the miner ten times less.
When the question of taxes comes up, Sunil W.J. suddenly becomes less precise in his calculations and mentions an export tax of about 10% that he claims to pay to the authorities.
Theoretically, sapphire extraction is governed by the Malagasy mining code, which requires obtaining operating permits and redistributing a portion of taxes to municipalities.
But in practice, the largely wild exploitation of precious stones does not bring much to the state coffers.
According to a World Bank report, approximately $250 million worth of gold and precious stones were illegally exported from Madagascar in 2011, a figure that sector experts still consider largely underestimated.
The Minister of Mines and Petroleum can only acknowledge this:
Discovered in the late 1990s, Malagasy sapphire supplies over 40% of global production. At 250 km long, the Sakaraha vein is one of the largest on the planet.
Back in Betsinefe, the kilograms of rubble are transported on men’s backs or by a few carts pulled by zebu.
Everything is dumped into the Fiherena River, where dozens of villagers busily and frantically sift the earth to reveal the coveted precious stones.
In the sapphire world, “success stories” are rare. Andry Razafindrakoto, a 19-year-old student from Tulear, the nearest major city, has nonetheless come to try to make his fortune.
On a nearby deposit, he managed to sell precious stones worth 4 million ariarys (1,130 euros), which allowed him to buy equipment and now have a small team of nine miners under his command.
Despite its highly improbable results, sapphire extraction remains the only future for thousands of villagers in the region, on a very poor island.