A landslide at an illegal gold mine has killed more than 100 people in the Central African Republic, on the border with Cameroon, the latest of many such accidents in the mineral-rich nation.
The low-tech, artisanal gold mine collapsed on August 18, 2026, in the village of Zamboye, in the Nana-Mambere prefecture, about 50 km from the Central African town of Baboua, near the Cameroon border. Search operations were still under way at the time of writing.
Several survivors were critically injured, said Gervais Ganagoroh, a local Red Cross volunteer involved in relief efforts. The death toll is likely to rise, since several people remained missing and others were trapped under the rubble, said Bertrand Be Yangué, a member of the Zamboye youth council.
“Finding them alive would be a miracle,” Yangué said. “We are saddened and heartbroken to see young men and women perish after coming to the mines to save their families from despair.”
Social media videos showed ground giving way at the vast open-pit site, where hundreds of artisanal miners work, burying people in its path. Footage showed miners, both men and women, caked in mud, pulling a body from the pit as dozens of others were scattered across the site, some shouting for help.
“The ground completely collapsed and buried people,” said Cedric Mbango, a miner at the site, who called the incident catastrophic.
The landslide is believed to have been caused by the collapse of several underground tunnels in which miners were working, the Baboua public prosecutor said in a statement. An investigation has been opened to determine the cause, identify the victims, and establish criminal liability, the prosecutor said.
“At this stage, it’s difficult for us to establish a formal toll,” Baboua elected official Laurent Ngon Baba said on August 19.
At least four of the victims were Cameroonian, the Cameroon Tribune reported. Survivors were taken to a hospital in Baboua, and the search continued on August 19. Cameroonian authorities said they were ready to receive and treat any injured people who crossed the border.
Gregoire Mvongo, governor of the eastern Cameroonian region, said on public broadcaster CRTV that authorities were “working in close collaboration with our Central African colleagues to deal with the aftermath of this tragedy”.
A recurring disaster
Mine collapses are common in the Central African Republic, where several thousand people work in small-scale, informal extraction largely outside government control. Protective equipment is scarce, and accidents are frequently fatal.
Screenshot of a verified video that shows the gold mine collapse in the Central African Republic, with more than 100 people reported dead.
| Photo Credit:
AP
In June, a similar collapse killed several dozen people at the Be-Mbari gold mining site, also on the Central African Republic-Cameroon border. In mid-March, a landslide at a mine in Ngourroum, in the west, killed seven people; another 20 were killed in February in Gordi, in the north-east.
“Although artisanal mining in the Central African Republic is regulated, many miners and traders operate without mining permits in unauthorised areas or bypass official trade channels,” Aicha Pemboura, a researcher at the Central Africa Observatory on Organised Crime and Violence Project, wrote in an article in March.
Martin Ziguele, president of the Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People, said the government bore direct responsibility for the tragedies.
Maurice Kamto, a Cameroonian opposition leader and prominent critic of President Paul Biya—Kamto placed second to Biya in the 2018 election—said the accident revealed “the inhumanity of those who grow rich from the illegal exploitation of minerals”.
“They show absolutely no concern for the conditions in which compatriots, driven by destitution, work at unregulated mining sites, without the slightest safety measures,” Kamto added.
Cameroon, which is banking on the exploitation of its mineral resources—notably iron, diamonds, gold, bauxite and cobalt—to develop its economy, adopted a new mining code in 2023. Last month, the Cameroonian government announced tighter controls on the gold sector after officials found a significant gap between gold exports declared by customs and imports declared by receiving countries, notably the United Arab Emirates. The government says more than 200 companies are mining in Cameroon without a permit or authorisation.
A continent-wide pattern
The Zamboye disaster is not an isolated one. In January, more than 220 artisanal miners died in two successive landslides at the Luwowo coltan site in Rubaya, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), after days of heavy rain destabilised the terrain—one of the deadliest mining accidents recorded in the region in years. The Rubaya site, which produces roughly 15 per cent of the world’s coltan supply, has been under the control of the M23 armed group since 2024, complicating oversight and rescue efforts.
Artisanal mining employs tens of millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa, often filling the gap left by weak formal economies. But the same poverty that drives people underground—literally, in the case of unlicensed tunnels and open pits—also ensures that safety is the first casualty. Governments across the mineral belt stretching from Mali to the DRC have repeatedly pledged tighter regulation after such disasters; enforcement has just as repeatedly lagged behind.
