Abu Koroma, a 12-year-old orphan, supports his family by carrying buckets of Sewa River sand in Sierra Leone's Gondama village. Most people doing this work earn just US$4 to US$7 a day, supplying a global sand market where prices soared to US$230 per tonne last year.
It has become a common sight along Sierra Leone’s rivers: children as young as 10 bending under the weight of heavy buckets of sand. Some wade into the water to gather sand from the riverbed by hand. Others place buckets on their heads and carry them up the muddy banks.
Among them is Abu Koroma, a thin 12-year-old boy. Every day, he spends four hours after school on this back-breaking work on the Sewa River near Bo, one of the West African country’s biggest cities. Toiling alongside adult miners, he augments his family’s meagre income by gathering the sand that fuels Sierra Leone’s construction boom.
“To buy food for us, clothing, school fees and shelter, I should help,” he told The Globe and Mail in a determined voice.
Despite harbouring dreams of becoming an engineer one day, Abu’s reality is one of daily struggle. After the death of his parents, he shoulders the burden of supporting his grandmother, grandfather and uncle. He says he would rather be playing football.
“I wish there were other options,” his grandmother, Jennah Koroma, said. “But it’s the only way we can make ends meet.”
The U.S. embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, looms in the background as a boy crushes stones. Demand for sand is high in the construction industries of Freetown, Bo, Kenema and other cities, and in neighbouring Guinea's glass manufacturing sector.
Sand mining, crucial for the construction sector in countries such as Sierra Leone, has tripled in volume worldwide in the past two decades, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). “Our dependence on sand resources is staggering,” the agency said in a 2022 report.
Sand is the most mined material globally, with the UNEP estimating that 50 billion tonnes are harvested annually. It has become a “strategic resource” – yet it remains “off the radar” for governments and others, the agency said, warning that the relentless growth of the sand sector is unsustainable, a looming environmental and social crisis.
Across much of Africa, including Sierra Leone, the number of sand-extraction sites is proliferating, making them difficult to monitor and regulate. They operate with minimal government oversight. Regulators tend to focus on industrial mines, rather than the smaller-scale operations that are considered less environmentally damaging.
In the village of Gondama, near Bo, villagers labour tirelessly under the scorching sun at the sand-mining sites six days a week, their bodies drenched in sweat. Most are earning just US$4 to US$7 a day, even though the price of sand has surged from US$25 per tonne a decade ago to US$230 last year.
“I don’t want my children to follow in my footsteps,” Saidu Koroma, a 32-year-old sand miner, told The Globe. “But without education and opportunities, they have no choice but to help us after school.”
The Sewa River is a rich source of sand and diamonds, and despite Sierra Leone's anti-child-labour laws, many children take part in the work to dig up those resources.
In a country still suffering from the legacy of the devastating civil war that ended in 2002, and in an economy where other jobs are scarce, sand mining can give workers a precarious lifeline – despite the physical dangers and potentially heavy toll on their health. But the government has largely ignored issues such as child labour and inadequate wages, perpetuating a cycle of exploitation and vulnerability.
Sand-extraction operations are widespread along rivers and coastal areas in Sierra Leone, primarily to meet the increasing demand for construction materials in cities such as Freetown, Bo and Kenema. The demand from neighbouring Guinea’s glass manufacturing industry is driving up prices further.
Child labour is widespread in Sierra Leone, despite laws against it. In the bigger cities, children often work on breaking granite rocks into gravel, sold for cement production. Child miners, known locally as “half shovels,” are heavily involved in the country’s diamond mining sites.
Poverty researchers have argued that informal mining jobs are often the only way that children in rural areas can contribute to their family income and generate enough money to pay their school costs. But the risks can be severe.
In the sand-extraction sector, small-scale miners use rudimentary tools such as buckets, canoes and makeshift wooden, triangle-shaped ladders, even in the absence of permits. To extract sand, they often dive deep into rivers, navigating the murky waters and using their hands to scoop out the precious construction material.
The informal nature of the industry worsens the inequalities. The bulk of profits goes to middlemen and truck owners, leaving the labourers, including children, to endure harsh working conditions for meagre earnings. Many mining households choose to sell all their sand at the end of the season, earning a single lump-sum payment from truck owners, who wield significant influence over the prices.
Digging for sand is a team effort, with some people replacing others to take a break. Diving into the murky water can be dangerous work.
Children under the age of 18 are legally banned from the mining sector. Carrying heavy loads of any kind is considered “hazardous work” for children under international labour standards. Yet this work is common among children in Sierra Leone, especially in mining, studies show.
“Despite efforts to eradicate these practices, they persist, leaving children vulnerable to exploitation and harm,” said Emmanuel Allicious Macpherson Sam, a Sierra Leone lawyer, in a study published in February.
“Unfortunately, the presence of these children in the mines renders them susceptible to severe health risks,” he wrote.
“Children are often involved in physically demanding tasks, such as shovelling large amounts of gravel, carrying heavy loads on their heads and assisting in transporting stones in diamond mines. … It is evident that the anti-child-labour laws need more vigorous enforcement.”
A report by the U.S. Department of Labour in 2022 estimated that nearly a third of Sierra Leone’s children between the ages of 7 and 14 are combining work and school. But the country has only 29 labour inspectors and one vehicle for oversight of its entire work force, including adults and children, the report said.
With a report from Geoffrey York in Johannesburg.
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