A satellite survey of thirteen countries in the Congo Basin and West Africa, mapped as detection patches — fixed cells of about 320 m in which mining was detected.
The thirteen surveyed countries sit inside the outline of the whole continent, so the belt of activity reads against the rest of Africa. Each administrative area is shaded by how many detection patches fall inside it. Click a shaded area to pin its numbers to the panel, or anywhere else in a surveyed country for that country’s total. Drag to pan, and zoom with the buttons or ctrl/⌘+scroll. The protected-areas overlay draws only those that carry detected mining, not every protected area in the region.
—
Click a column heading to re-sort. “Areas affected” counts administrative units holding at least three detection patches, against every unit that country contributes to the survey. An area is each country’s second or third administrative level, so what it is called locally varies — districts in Ghana, territories in DR Congo, chiefdoms in Sierra Leone, local government areas in Nigeria. The panel on the map tags whichever level applies, ADM2 or ADM3.
Every figure on this page comes out of these tables, so you can check any of it or take the analysis further.