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Resource Extraction at Any Cost, at What Price?
Between informal artisanal gold mining and legally permitted extraction of sand, phosphate, or oil, West Africa faces the same underlying reality under two opposing legal regimes: polluted soil and water, sickened local populations, and a rural exodus, both cross-border and internal, driven by the lack of formal employment. This exodus fragments the families left behind, while the mining territories themselves suffer lasting environmental degradation. The article argues that an operation's legality reduces neither its human nor its environmental cost, it merely shifts where accountability falls, a question West African states have so far struggled to answer.
