Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining in Alga (Burkina Faso): Building a Decision-Aid Model for Development and Governance.

Abstract : Between 2001 and 2004, the BRGM carried out, in close collaboration with the BUMIGEB (the Geological Survey of Burkina Faso), research on Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining in Burkina Faso. We then constructed a Multi-Agent System model aimed at carrying out prospective research on answers to the following questions: q1)- "with regard to development, to what extent is it possible to improve the income of the mining population?" q2)- "with regard to governance, to what extent is it possible to reduce the importance of the clandestine gold buyers in the network?" Notwithstanding the values of the different numbers we obtained during our simulations, we particularly wanted to demonstrate here the possibility of building a model and tool to follow up the possible dynamic evolution of artisanal mining activity.