Africa
Mercury in Senegal mines endangers families
The quickest way to separate gold from rock, Sadio Camara says, is with a drop of mercury. In Senegal’s Kedougou Region, far from the capital Dakar and near the borders with Guinea and Mali, she and dozens of other women spent the day washing piles of sediment in search of gold. In front of her house a short walk away, she emptied a dime-sized packet of the silvery liquid into a plastic bucket of that sediment.
With bare hands and no mask, she swirls the mixture as her children watch. “I know it’s dangerous, because when we go to exchange the gold and they heat it again, those guys wear masks to avoid the smoke,” she says. But she says since she only processes a little gold at a time, she believes she is safe. But even small-scale exposure can carry serious risks.
Across West Africa, mercury — a potent neurotoxin — remains the dominant method for extracting gold from ore in the region’s booming informal mining sector, much of it illegal and unregulated. In Senegal’s gold-rich Kedougou region, women like Camara use the metal regularly, often without protective gloves and masks, to make a living. Mercury exposure can cause irreversible brain damage, developmental delays, tremors, and loss of vision, hearing and coordination.
Once released, it spreads easily through air, water and soil. Particularly after heavy rains, it contaminates rivers, poisons fish and accumulates up the food chain. “We are doing this because of ignorance and lack of means,” Camara says as her son played at her feet in the courtyard of her family’s home. “If the government know what is good for us, come and show us.” In artisanal mining, mercury is prized for its ability to bind quickly and easily to gold. Inside her kitchen hut not far from the stream, Camara heats a nugget of mercury-laced sediment with a metal spoon over an open flame. The toxic metal evaporates and leaves behind a kernel of gold.
There’s no mask, no gloves – just the raw materials and her bare hands. Her children stand just a few feet away, watching and breathing the fumes. The process is cheap, effective and dangerous. Camara said she doesn’t usually handle the burning herself – that task is typically left to men. But she and other women regularly mix and shape the mercury amalgam with no protection. “If you stabbed yourself with a knife it wounds you, if mercury did the same, people wouldn’t touch it. But with mercury you can go years without feeling the effects.
The consequences come later,” says Doudou Dramé, president of an organization that advocates for safer conditions for gold miners in Kedougou. Women are also particularly vulnerable, says Modou Goumbala, the monitoring and evaluation manager at La Lumiere, an NGO that supports community development in southeastern Senegal. He says the mercury being used to separate the gold from the earth ends up in the region’s waterways, which women interact with a lot more than men in Senegalese society. “Women do the laundry with water, women do the dishes. Women wash the children. And women often use the waterways for this, not having sources of safe drinking water,” he says. That exposure can be especially dangerous for pregnant and nursing women. Mercury can cross the placenta, putting fetuses at risk of developmental delays and birth defects. Infants may also absorb the toxin through contaminated breast milk.
Gold can be extracted from earth without using mercury, using gravity separation, often achieved with machines like shaking tables. In 2020, the Senegalese government promised to build 400 mercury-free gold processing units, but so far only one has been constructed. During a recent visit, the rusting slab of metal sat unused beneath a corrugated roof. The machine is in Bantaco, 15 miles from Camara’s home, and it isn’t practical for most miners to use because of the logistical challenge of transporting ore there and back to where they are from. Goumbala says one machine per village would come closer to solving the problem.
Jen Marraccino is the senior development director at Pure Earth, an NGO that works to fight against mercury and lead poisoning, particularly in artisanal small-scale gold mining. She says that gravitational separation is a technology that can provide miners a way to get gold without endangering their health. “The more that this type of work happens in a particular region, the costs then go down for these technologies such as shaking tables. Building the supply chains to the international market, the costs go down. So, solutions can build and grow within a region,” she says.
AP’s repeated efforts to schedule an interview with Senegal’s director of artisanal and small-scale mining were unsuccessful. The director later said the department had been suspended. He did not provide a reason.
The father of a young man allegedly shot in the head by Kenyan police has called for the officer to be charged.
Boniface Kariuki, 22, remains in intensive care after undergoing surgery on Tuesday night. He is believed to have been caught up in a confrontation with two officers in Nairobi at a protest against the alleged killing of a blogger while in police custody.
One officer, who had concealed his face with a mask, reportedly shot him in the head.
Jonah Kariuki said the bullet pierced his son’s skull just above the ear, but the surgery had been “successful” and “his heart was beating.”
“I would say that those police officers need to take responsibility because they also have children and the person they hurt is somebody’s child, Jonah Kariuki told reporters on Wednesday. “That police officer has committed a crime and stern action should be taken against him.”
‘Rogue men’
In a statement, police said the officer had been arrested. But senator Okiya Omtatah said the problem of police violence goes beyond a single officer.
“There are so many people who were injured by police and injured by those goons. We need accountability for these people. We cannot live in a country like this. This country is called the Republic of Kenya, being a republic it means a country governed by law not governed by rogue men and so we are demanding that tomorrow’s demonstrations be peaceful, be massive until we get accountability for all the excesses that have been unleashed upon us by the regime of [Kenyan President] William Ruto and his acolytes.”
Tuesday’s protests in the Kenyan capital followed the death of blogger Albert Ojwang who died while in police custody. Ojwang was arrested on June 6 in western Kenya for what police called publishing “false information” about a top police official on social media.
Police attributed his death to him “hitting his head against the cell wall,” something activists have questioned.
The judiciary in a statement on Wednesday vowed to “uphold justice” in all cases including those involving alleged police brutality.
The British Embassy in Kenya, in a statement on X, called for “a swift, independent & transparent investigation into the actions of the police.”
History of police violence
Kenya has a history of police brutality, and President William Ruto previously vowed to end it, along with extrajudicial killings.
Last year, several activists and protesters were abducted and killed by Kenyan police during the finance bill protests.
The demonstrations led to calls for Ruto’s removal.
The city of Xuchang, in China’s Henan province, is known as the global wig capital producing about 60 per cent of them worldwide.
With over 4,100 hair product companies and 300,000 people working in the industry, it has made a name for itself in this niche market.
Most of the wigs are made with human hair, with one purchaser saying that in early days, she bought mostly from people in rural households.
The city has been producing wigs for hundreds of years.
“Many see wigs as something to cover up a problem. But they were originally accessories for aristocrats, designed to enhance beauty and elevate one’s status,” says Zhang Tianou, executive vice-president of Rebecca Hair Products.
He says that before 1989, the company operated solely as a component supplier to the United States market, exposing it to significant single-market risks.
“But seeing wigs as a daily necessity, like shirts or sneakers, for the African diaspora, we decided to develop the African market,” he says.
Xuchang’s wigs have become sought after items in Africa, Europe, the United States and elsewhere.
In 2024, the city exported over $2 billion worth of hair products, including to a shop in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Its owner, Fiona, says that at first it was a bit scary importing from Rebecca Fashion, but now she is very happy.
“Rebecca Fashion has been serving us diligently, and mostly in the booming market. And the speciality of our wigs is nobody, no producer, no manufacturer here in Kenya has been able to do a replica of what we have,” she says.
Hair has been an indicator of wealth and nobility since ancient times with the first documented use of extensions and wigs dating back to Ancient Egypt.
US TV giant Tyler Perry has been sued for $260 million by an actor alleging the mogul leveraged his industry power to assault and harass him while keeping him quiet, repeatedly sexually.
Actor Derek Dixon, who appeared on 85 episodes of the BET series The Oval, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court.
“Mr. Perry took his success and power and used his considerable influence in the entertainment industry to create a coercive, sexually exploitative dynamic with Mr. Dixon — initially promising him career advancement and creative opportunities, such as producing his pilot and casting him in his show, only to subject him to escalating sexual harassment, assault and battery, and professional retaliation,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit was filed Friday and first reported Tuesday by TMZ.
Perry’s attorney, Matthew Boyd, said the allegations are false.
“This is an individual who got close to Tyler Perry for what now appears to be nothing more than setting up a scam,” Boyd said in a statement Tuesday. “But Tyler will not be shaken down, and we are confident these fabricated harassment claims will fail.”
The lawsuit says that Perry first noticed Dixon in 2019 when Dixon was part of the event staff at a Perry party, and later offered an audition.
Dixon first appeared in a small role on the Perry series Ruthless before getting the bigger role on the political drama The Oval.
Perry soon began sending unwanted sexual text messages to Dixon, according to the lawsuit, which includes screenshots of several of them.
“What’s it going to take for you to have guiltless sex?” one of the messages says.
The lawsuit says Perry offered Dixon an increasingly prominent role on the show as his sexual advances became more aggressive.
The actor says he tried to remain friendly while maintaining boundaries.
“Dixon did his best to tiptoe around Mr. Perry’s sexual aggression while keeping on Mr. Perry’s good side,” the lawsuit says. “Mr. Perry made it clear to Dixon that if Dixon ignored Perry or failed to engage with the sexual innuendoes, Dixon’s character would ‘die.’”
The lawsuit says Perry eventually sexually assaulted Dixon on “multiple occasions,” including an instance where he “forcibly pulled off Mr. Dixon’s clothing, groped his buttocks, and attempted to force himself on Dixon.”
According to the lawsuit, Dixon clearly told Perry, “No,” but he was initially ignored until he was able to de-escalate the situation and change the subject.
The following day, Perry apologized and told Dixon he would work with him on a TV pilot he was seeking to produce.
Dixon later received a raise that the lawsuit suggests was part of an attempt to keep him quiet.
He said the fear of his character dying kept him quiet as intended.
Perry also produced and bought the rights to the pilot, called “Losing It,” but the lawsuit alleges Perry had no intention of selling the show and was using it only for leverage over Dixon.
The lawsuit describes several other assaults, including one where Dixon was staying in a guest room of Perry’s house when Perry climbed into bed with him uninvited and began groping him, the lawsuit alleges.
Dixon eventually moved from Atlanta, home to Perry’s production studio, to Los Angeles to distance themselves from each other.
Dixon filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2024, and when that didn’t result in any action from the show’s producers, he quit.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Dixon has.
“The Oval” is one of many television series executive-produced by, written by and directed by the 55-year-old Perry. He first became known as the creator and star of the Madea films and has since built a major production empire in TV and movies. As an actor, he has also appeared in the films “Gone Girl” and “Don’t Look Up.”
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