Liberia: residents decry illicit sand mining in Schiefflin township
Residents are pleading with the government to come to their aid as illegal miners continue to mine sand and causing grave environmental hazard to the community. They say that there is continuous 24-hour, 7-day beach mining taking place.
China’s search for sand is destroying Mozambique’s pristine beaches
The community of Nagonha in northern Mozambique sits on a tall dune with lush greenery on the one side, and a turquoise Indian ocean on the other. It should have been the kind of unspoiled landscape that Mozambique’s growing tourism industry is beginning to take advantage of. Instead, a Chinese mining company has irrevocably tarnished the scenery, and people’s lives.
Ugandan children abandon school for sand mining
More and more Ugandan children drop out of school, lured into sand mining on the banks of River Nile in Busaana Sub-county, and joining what seems a lucrative venture to earn a living.
Jobless Cape Coast youth venture into illegal beach sand winning; Ghana
The youth at Bakaano, a suburb of Cape Coast, have taken to illegal mining due to the unavailability of jobs.
In pictures: Kenya’s coastal conservation heroes
Just 30 km south of the booming port town of Mombasa, residents of two tranquil Kenyan villages are making history. Here, amongst the mud-walled houses and coconut trees, the people of Gazi and Makongeni villages have become the world’s first communities to harness the carbon market through mangrove conservation.
Schoolboys employed in sand mining, Tamil Nadu, India
Poverty and proximity to riverbeds have been weaning away a number of children studying in government schools and pushing them into sand mining. The sand mafia, in a bid to find cheap labour, has been using schoolchildren to lift sand from the riverbeds. The unsuspecting youngsters fall prey to the designs of the mafia, tempted by the money on offer.
Sand mining ravages African beaches
Sand is a natural resource that is more and more exploited. Worldwide, beaches are mined for sand. As many other countries in the world, African States have legislated to better protect their coastal environment, but this did not put an end to illegal beach sand mining and its detrimental effects on the ecosystems.
Kenya brings in world’s toughest plastic bag ban: Using plastic bags is illegal — and punishable by jail time
No matter where you go in Kenya — from the vast expanses of the Great Rift Valley to the white-sand beaches off the Indian Ocean — one thing is a constant: plastic bags. But beginning today, almost all plastic bags are illegal in Kenya.
He who controls the sand: the mining ‘mafias’ killing each other to build cities
In Kenya, as in most of the developing world, cities are growing at a frenzied pace. Creating buildings to house all the people and the roads to knit them together requires prodigious quantities of sand. As the price of sand goes up, the ‘mafias’ get more involved.