Credit Access for Responsible Extraction (CARE)

Policy Context

The Credit Access for Responsible Extraction (CARE) project addresses exploitative lending practices that trap artisanal gold miners in cycles of poverty and informality. Currently, miners in Sierra Leone must borrow from informal lenders who use opaque, output-contingent repayment schemes that force miners to sell gold at steep discounts. The project partners with a local microfinance institution to offer conditional credit with transparent, fixed interest rates that allow miners to sell their gold at market prices and retain more profit from successful mining seasons. By making credit access contingent on formalization and safety standards, the intervention could create positive economic incentives for better mining practices while freeing miners from exploitative lending arrangements. This approach targets a sector employing approximately 400,000 people in Sierra Leone (and many more globally), offering a market-based solution to improve miners’ economic well-being and reduce externalities associated with mining in a setting where the state’s capacity to regulate artisanal mining is limited.

Study Design

Following field visits and partner meetings in Bo District and Freetown in May 2025, the project is now advancing to its scoping phase, co-funded by CEGA’s Development Economics Challenge, with data collection planned for Q3/Q4 2025. The team will use the funds to conduct research around Makeni, including constructing a sampling frame of artisanal gold miners, qualitative interviews and focus groups, and surveys across 65 mining sites covering approximately 130 miners and mine workers. This data collection will directly inform the design of the new lending program, focusing on miners’ demographics, socioeconomic status, access to finance, profitability, and interest in conditional credit products. The scoping work positions the team to develop a randomized controlled trial to rigorously evaluate the intervention’s impacts on economic well-being and mining practices.

Results and Policy Lessons

This pilot is ongoing and findings are forthcoming.