Eritrea's Gold Rush: Western Mining Companies, Regional Wars, and Human Rights Abuses in Africa

Leading Horn of Africa expert Charlotte Touati exposes the role played by Canadian gold mining company Nevsun and other global actors in propping up the regime of Isayas Aferwerki, one of Africa's most dangerous dictators. In the process, Touati shows how global capital networks help perpetuate economic and political instability in the Horn of Africa, which in turn is fostering violence and volatility throughout other parts of the world.

Using a narrative framework and a core cast of characters to help guide non-specialist readers through her findings, Touati explains the enormous significance of how Nevsun partnered with Aferwerki to open the Bisha gold mine and save his regime from bankruptcy. When Eritrean refugees later claimed they were “conscripted” to work in the mines without pay and abused as part of their National Service, Nevsun hired lobbyists to defend Eritrea's actions and cast the very notion of human rights as a Western “Trojan horse.” Australian, Chinese, and Russian actors gradually became involved, and even the propaganda and disinformation campaigns of the infamous Russian Wagner Group seem ultimately to stem from the rhetoric of Afewerki and his lobbyists.

This violently anti-Western rhetoric was injected into a pan-Africanist discourse to become an ideological and rhetorical toolbox. It was used to prevent any intervention on behalf of Eritreans trapped in their own country or Tigrayans targeted for genocide in neighboring Ethiopia. It was employed to legitimize new conflicts throughout the Sahel and the rest of Africa's notorious “Coup Belt.” And ultimately, it took on even wider global dimensions with regard to the ongoing crisis around the Red Sea ports, which Eritrea controls, and with regard to the question of the influence of the Gulf States in the Horn of Africa.