Central Province Wants Faster Mining Licences to Stop Miners Dying. Zambia's Own Backlog Numbers Say the Problem Runs Deeper.

KABWE, CENTRAL PROVINCE. Dr Mwanakampwe made the appeal when Billy Chewe, Director of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining at the Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development, paid him a courtesy call this week, according to Diamond TV Online and corroborated by Lusaka Times. He said the current licensing process, which he put at roughly two years, is pushing young people into illegal mining because they are trying to survive, not break the law. He tied this to President Hakainde Hichilema's 2021 call for young people to form cooperatives, and said the government still owes them a system that lets them do that legally and quickly. ## What he's actually asking for Three things, by his own account. First, faster ASM licence turnaround. Second, a formalised payment system so miners are paid into bank accounts instead of cash in sacks, which he said would help account for mineral transactions and stop value leaving the country untracked. Third, aggregation support so small miners can access markets without relying on informal buyers. He also credited the Ministry with rolling out capacity-building programmes for the province, and separately, at the official opening of Phase Five of the ASM Training Programme in Kabwe the same week, told stakeholders the sector should be treated as a genuine engine of citizen economic empowerment, not just extraction. None of that is disputed here. The gap is between diagnosing the problem correctly and the Ministry's own record on fixing it. ## The deaths he's talking about aren't hypothetical, and they aren't confined to one province Mwanakampwe's comment about people losing their lives in mining pits was not abstract. It landed in the middle of a ten-day cluster of fatal illegal-mining accidents spanning three provinces. | Date | Event | |---|---| | Sept 1, 2026 | A 22-year-old man, Elias Soko, dies at Tivilili stream, Chadiza District, Eastern Province, after gravel collapses on him while gold panning | | Aug 29, 2026 | Four illegal