
Unearthing Subterranean Knowledge
If the savannas of West Africa are a new corporate mining frontier in the 21st century, it’s because it is also home to the world’s longest-standing indigenous gold mining economy.
3 Article(s) by:
Madina Thiam is a historian of the Sahel and West Africa, and an assistant professor at New York University.

If the savannas of West Africa are a new corporate mining frontier in the 21st century, it’s because it is also home to the world’s longest-standing indigenous gold mining economy.

In the late 1890s and early 1900s, a number of West African Muslims migrated east, settling in Sudan and Mecca, to seek refuge from European colonization.

It has become customary to discuss Mali while simultaneously ignoring Mali.