Tambacounda Region
Tambacounda's Falémé iron ore (750Mt reserves) and artisanal gold mining (1.3t mercury/year) challenge Niokolo-Koba UNESCO park conservation.
Tambacounda spans Senegal's eastern interior where the Falémé River borderland with Mali hosts iron ore deposits (750 million metric tonnes) that ArcelorMittal's 2007 agreement targeted. The Falémé Deposits' 300 million tonnes of oxide ore and 250 million tonnes of magnetite represent mining potential that infrastructure constraints have delayed exploiting.
Gold mining alongside iron ore creates extractive activity in the region, with 1.3 tonnes of mercury from artisanal mining (compared to Kedougou's 3.9 tonnes) indicating the environmental impact that accompanies small-scale extraction. The July 2024 mining ban near the Falémé River applies to Tambacounda as to Kedougou, the regulatory effort to contain degradation that enforcement challenges complicate.
The Niokolo-Koba National Park (UNESCO World Heritage Site) provides conservation function and tourism potential that extractive development threatens. Whether Tambacounda can balance mining revenue with environmental protection—or whether resource extraction depletes ecological assets—tests whether development creates or destroys long-term value.