GOLD BELOW BELAMBO
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60 km south of Antananarivo, in the district of Ambatolampy, you have to leave the tarmac National 7 road and then venture towards the east, on a chaotic, insecure track. One hour and 10 km later, the roadway ends at Belambo, a small town of around 15,000 inhabitants that jealously guards its own underground treasure: gold.
Belambo’s extraordinary gold-bearing properties were brought to light in 2006, when some vazaha (foreigners) rented some of the local peasants’ land to make test drills. In 2008, they started to employ local men to dig the earth and extract the prestigious yellow mineral.
Early in 2009, Madagascar was shaken by a major political crisis, and all quarrying and mining contracts made with foreigners were reviewed.
Belambo’s vazaha left the region suddenly, leaving the beginnings of their prospecting holes behind them, as well as the primary school they had renovated for the town.
And so, since March 2009, the inhabitants of Belambo and the surrounding towns have been frenetically working. Most of them have left their cattle and smallholdings to go to the quarries left by the foreigners in the hope of extracting some of the 24-carat gold. Every day, thousands of men and women take their angady (a type of spade) and dig the red, iron-rich soil, descending as far as 30m!
Although everyone seems content with the new gold rush, the mayor of Belambo sounds the alarm. “This wealth under our land should be mined by foreign or Malagasy companies controlled by the State, with the benefits going to the community first. What we need here is electricity and a new road so that local farmers can sell their produce more easily.”
But the farmers that the mayor is talking about do not seem ready to drop the gold, one gram of which is worth 5 months’ pay.