Monday, May 26, 2025

Nassarawa, Nigeria

Abdullahi Ibrahim Danjija assiduously chisels away at the whitish rock before stuffing into a bag the blocks that come loose from the walls of the open-pit mine.

In a day’s work, he fills three bags weighing 50 kg each, earning 150,000 naira ($100), twice the minimum monthly wage in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, where more than half the population lives below the poverty line.

Three years ago, the 31-year-old miner came down from Kano, in the north, attracted by the promise of fortune linked to the development of the lithium mining industry in Nasarawa state, in the center of the country.

There, as in other Nigerian states, the prospect of participating in the explosion in global demand for lithium, one of the critical minerals used in the manufacture of electric batteries and cell phones, is a source of great interest.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global demand for lithium is set to increase forty-fold by 2040, an increase that cannot be met by the current main producers Australia, China and Chile alone.

– Artisanal mines –

In Gidan Kwano, not far from where Abdullahi is working, another group of workers is refusing access to their mine. There are several families, women and children involved, cutting into the subsoil with explosives.

Although they are proud of the results of their extraction site, they have no official mining license and avoid communicating about their mine in the media, fearing that others will try to take it over.

In Nigeria, mining activities are often illegal, at best artisanal. Even with a permit, miners exploit the soil without respecting any safety or environmental rules.

Along the main road in the town of Nasarawa, a succession of empty houses serve as warehouses. Here, miners and middlemen sort and clean the rock to prepare concentrated pieces of lithium for their customers.

Matthew Danbala, one of these salesmen, hammers out the pebbles one by one, crouching on the ground in the midst of a dozen children who copy his gestures.

“We’ve been very happy since the lithium came here; the women and children just have to go into the bush, dig without having to spend anything, and then they come back to town to sell,” he boasts.

At the end of the chain of this informal economy, the buyers are “almost exclusively Chinese”, according to another intermediary, Muhammed, 43.

This former property developer has been selling lithium “for five years” and admits that “it has developed the region a lot” and “created jobs for everyone”.

– Chinese companies –

China, the world’s leading refiner and consumer of lithium, is only the second largest producer and has to import the ore in large quantities.

The Nigerian government wants to attract foreign investment by promoting its “new oil”.

It regularly declares war on illegal miners and carries out waves of arrests, but fails to halt the flow of would-be investors.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s leading oil producer wants to require foreign investors to install processing plants in return, a clause which, according to the Nigerian media, is a major deterrent for some.

A memorandum of understanding was indeed signed at the end of 2024 between Paris and Abuja to carry out mining projects, particularly concerning lithium, but for the time being foreign investment is limited to Chinese companies, such as Avatar and Ganfeng, which have set up local plants where they transform raw rock into lithium oxide before sending it to Chinese factories.

“Certins are launching excavators even before they have information about the soils” in defiance of ‘environmental considerations’, says Uba Saidu Malami, President of the Geological Society of Nigeria.

“The geologist also deplores the “lack of exploratory work” and “data” available on Nigerian lithium reserves, and calls for “better regulation of the sector”.

– Conflicts –

In addition to environmental risks, artisanal lithium mining in Nigeria is a source of conflict, according to analyst Charles Asiegbu.

“Local communities may disagree over the location of mining resources” or they may ‘feel aggrieved by foreign companies and attack their employees’, he believes.

This can also lead to “the creation of organized armed groups who take possession of resources and exploit them illegally because there is no government presence in these areas”.

In Gidan Kwano, Abdullahi Ibrahim Danjija continues to dig, even during the rainy season, when the risk of landslides is frequent and fatal accidents common.

Right next door, Fulani herders graze their cows and burn a few fields to prepare the soil for the next harvest, paying no attention to the regular detonations that dynamite the surrounding rock.

Humaniterre with AFP