(written by F4M director, Dr Terry Garde)
Our page on the CRED website shows both sizes of a device known as GoldKacha, the standard size, to be used in a fixed location and a smaller more recently developed size, the GoldKacha mini (miniGK). These are mechanised pieces of equipment which replace the messy, mucky, labour intensive, manual sluicing of either crushed gold ores or mine dumps containing gold particles, as shown in the picture below. The picture also shows how basic the system can be, bits of wood nailed together to make a box, a plastic drum to carry and tip water into the top of the sluice, and an inclined trough for the watery mud to run down. Unseen within the trough are blankets made of hessian sacks spread out along the bottom to catch the heavy minerals, including tiny particles of gold, as the slurry washes over.
The prototype miniGK has now been extensively tested on mine sites in both Kenya and Zimbabwe.
In Migori County, Kenya, it was commissioned by a local miner/ technician, Opiyo Solomon who sorted out the water flow rate, a drain to a recycle pond, connected it to the local electricity supply, and built a shed over the device. The option to avoid the slow, messy, labour intensive and poor recoveries of the hand-made sluice proved irresistible and soon the women were queuing up to use the miniGK.
Male miners were more sceptical and did not initially seek to use the miniGK, preferring to trust sluicing the old-fashioned way. Now, though, along with the women, they are queuing and paying to use it within a central processing unit (CPU) irrespective of where they are mining their ores.
The second prototype miniGK has been tested on an operating gold mine in Zimbabwe, in their workshop as shown in the picture below. Although there were initial difficulties with setting up the flow of slurry into the device, it did its job without any problems. The mine management reported their satisfaction with its reliability, robustness and efficient gold recoveries.
The miniGK is now being deployed to another site in Zimbabwe to work directly with artisanal (or community) gold miners, who are the intended beneficiaries of the little machine all along.
We, at Foundations for Mining, along with CRED Foundation, remain hopeful that the device can be successfully marketed in order to improve the daily livelihoods of woman miners anywhere in the world!