Strengthening Cooperative Governance in Côte d’Ivoire’s Artisanal Gold Sector

The planetGOLD Côte d’Ivoire project team is meeting with artisanal mining cooperatives across the country to build their capacity to support a responsible artisanal gold sector.

The artisanal gold mining sector in the country is currently at an important turning point. Artisanal mining cooperatives are major contributors in moving towards formalization and ensuring the sector’s sustainability. Ensuring these cooperatives are introducing good governance practices is key to their economic viability and their contribution to local development.

The Ivorian legal framework allows applicants for artisanal mining permits to form cooperatives in accordance with the OHADA Uniform Act on Cooperatives. This approach aims to promote a more transparent and inclusive economic model.

In practice, artisanal mining cooperatives today face many challenges structuring themselves effectively. Their training and capacity needs are varied: they must both meet legal obligations and adopt the principles of good governance and responsible trade. At the same time, access to finance is essential to enable artisanal mining actors to equip themselves with mercury-free technologies.

However, to be eligible for this financing, local cooperatives must demonstrate sound governance and rigorous financial management.

A recent assessment by the planetGOLD Côte d’Ivoire project found that many cooperatives and their bylaws aren’t aligned with best practices, including values of democracy, equality, and solidarity. These values ensure successful and inclusive groups, where members are treated as collective owners of the cooperative.

For example, one cooperative the team met with exists as a cooperative in name only. With no members and all management responsibility falling to one person—the president. This cooperative highlights the challenges to ensure groups understand the cooperative model and how they should function, both on paper and in practice.

In March 2024, the planetGOLD team travelled to meet with three artisanal mining cooperatives to better understand their difficulties and identify opportunities to strengthen their governance:

the ESSOUAN Gold cooperative in Abouakakro (Bonikro sub-prefecture, Djékanou department, Bélier region)
the Frères de Bidiala Bobosso cooperative (Dabakala department, Hambol region)
the Wobêh cooperative in Pétonkaha (Kiémou sub-prefecture, Korhogo department, Poro region)
Across all three communities, the planetGOLD Côte d’Ivoire team found the cooperatives and artisanal gold miners eager to improve their practices—not just from a mining perspective, but with regards to their internal governance. The planetGOLD project will support the cooperatives as they revise their bylaws, improve membership management, build governance capacity, as well as formalize.

There is a common understanding that cooperatives need to take steps to become more professional and financially sustainable to unlock financing opportunities. Once cooperatives become eligible for financing, investments can be made to improve mining practices, leading to new markets. Importantly, this support from the planetGOLD Côte d’Ivoire project ensures that not only legal requirements are met, but also that the artisanal gold sector can become a driver for sustainable, economic development across the country.

The planetGOLD Cote d’Ivoire project is supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and led by UN Environment Programme (UNEP). It is executed by IMPACT and the Centre Africaine pour la Santé et l’Environnement (CASE).

July 7, 2025

Attending the National Capacity Building Workshop on Unlocking Opportunities for Small and Medium Enterprises in Zimbabwe under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Hi ladies, Please visit our ZimTrade YouTube page and see your reels

https://youtu.be/NydWd_vc-WM?si=KShLPpS-kaDdha7R

Hi ladies, Please visit our ZimTrade YouTube page and see your reels

https://youtu.be/NydWd_vc-WM?si=KShLPpS-kaDdha7R

At the Intra-African Trade Fair

Support Africa’s cooperative economy and grow your wealth by purchasing co-op debentures on coops.africa.

Your investment helps cooperatives expand production, create jobs, and trade more effectively — while you earn solid returns backed by real commodities and thriving businesses.

Join the movement to build a stronger, people-owned economy across the continent.

My family has always loved ice cream. I remember growing up in Bulawayo, my mum would often take us to the famous Eskimo Hut for a Sunday treat. That love has stayed with us over the years.

In 2018, I adopted a plant based lifestyle. Obviously it meant that I now needed to find a good replacement for my favourite dessert, ice cream. Mow, living in Zimbabwe, I had zero options by way of ice cream. It is then that I started experimenting with making dairy-free ice cream, then one day, a year later, as we were enjoying some coffee ice cream I had just made, my mum casually said, you should commercialize this ice cream. You need to share it with the world. Then in 2020 the brand was bom.

The name is inspired by my mum's names Bose Sanya hence dcRossa. I could not have thought of a more fitting name for the brand. She is truly the inspiration behind it on many levels.

Our desire is for vegans and the lactose-intolerant to still he able to enjoy leg it ice cream.

Our Recipes intentionally provide the luxurious taste of a rich ice cream sans problematic ingredients. H V want the indulgence to be guilt-free

We use the finest plant -based milks and incorporate real fruit in some of our flavours. Our coffee and vanilla are sourced from the best, fair-trade producers in Africa and her Islands.

So, welcome to the deRossa tribe, we trust you will share this brand with friends and family as you continue to savour each flavor and scoop!

GOGOS ARE LIVING ANGELS

Nobody makes (any) kids happy more than aboGogo and aboMkhulu.

They treat and spoil kids better than many of us as fathers and mothers.

That's why Soweto Business Access, SBA Asinavalo, wants us to use the R500m Spaza Fund to make these living angels happy.

If grandparents are happy, our kids are happy. If our kids are happy, we are happy.

So, let's all be happy by setting up a bank that will pay profits to our elders whenever Asinavalo shops and spazas are opened around Gauteng using the R500m from the Departments Of Small Business as well as Trade, Industry And Competition.

If you want your own gogo and/or mkhulu to also benefit from profits made in 20 outlets that will be opened in association People's Stores, simply Whatsapp the word "gogo" to 081 521 8080. Pls do not send an SMS. We will reply within 2 days.

Mphuthi MPHUTHI (Mr.)
Chief Servant @
SBA Asinavalo