Ekow Bartels
About
My research project
Contextualizing Innovation in Africa's Informal Small-Scale Mining; Development Trajectories, Impacts and Policy ImplicationsThe research will critically reappraise and contextualize innovation strategies in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) in sub-Saharan Africa, with a view to invigorating debate on the sector’s formalization narrative. It focuses heavily on the innovation strategies at work in the region’s burgeoning informal ASM economy. This is the larger of what is referred to here as the “two distinctive spheres” of the ASM sector now rooted in sub-Saharan Africa, the other being the legalized formalized segment. The research will raise broader questions for research, including how have miners managed to produce minerals? what innovation strategies have they employed in a bid to increase their production? and what forms of support can and have they drawn on in the informal economy?
The specific objectives of the research are as follows:
1. To broaden understanding of what innovation means in the ASM context in sub-Saharan Africa and the strategies it has spawned, the impetus behind the sector’s formalization agenda, and the technical manifestations of these ideas.
2. To analyze the dynamics of innovation in the region’s informal ASM economy and
3. To broaden understanding of the support networks which sustain these operations.
Supervisors
The research will critically reappraise and contextualize innovation strategies in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) in sub-Saharan Africa, with a view to invigorating debate on the sector’s formalization narrative. It focuses heavily on the innovation strategies at work in the region’s burgeoning informal ASM economy. This is the larger of what is referred to here as the “two distinctive spheres” of the ASM sector now rooted in sub-Saharan Africa, the other being the legalized formalized segment. The research will raise broader questions for research, including how have miners managed to produce minerals? what innovation strategies have they employed in a bid to increase their production? and what forms of support can and have they drawn on in the informal economy?
The specific objectives of the research are as follows:
1. To broaden understanding of what innovation means in the ASM context in sub-Saharan Africa and the strategies it has spawned, the impetus behind the sector’s formalization agenda, and the technical manifestations of these ideas.
2. To analyze the dynamics of innovation in the region’s informal ASM economy and
3. To broaden understanding of the support networks which sustain these operations.