About the ASM Hub

The ASM Hub gathers the best-available public evidence on artisanal and small-scale mining into one fast, navigable place, the sector, the data, the countries and the issues, so that anyone working on ASM can start from a shared picture rather than a blank page.

Why it exists

ASM sustains around 150 million livelihoods and supplies a fifth of the world’s gold, yet it is one of the least-measured parts of the global economy. That invisibility is not neutral: it lets harms persist and lets policy be made in the dark. The hub takes the same founding conviction as the World Bank and Pact’s Delve platform, that reliable data is the precondition for any serious intervention, and presents it in a modern, openly-navigable form.

Where the data comes from

Figures are compiled from the public record: the World Bank / Pact State of the Sector reports, IGF’s Global Trends in ASM, the ILO, UN Environment, IPIS, USGS and national studies, alongside the Delve database itself. Most ASM data is secondary and uneven, so the hub aggregates rather than claims new primary measurement.

How we handle uncertainty

• Ranges, not false precision, where the literature disagrees, we show the range.
• Dated figures, estimates are tied to a year, because the sector moves fast.
• Visible gaps, the Countries table flags how solid each country’s data is, and shows a dash where there is none.
• Sourced, charts carry their sources; the library points to the originals.

Relationship to Delve & Hatua

This hub is an independent rebuild and tribute, not an official Delve product; the live Delve database remains the home of the contribution workflow and the canonical datasets. It sits within Hatua, a digital public-infrastructure platform for artisanal and small-scale mining, where ASM, supply chains and community data meet in practice.

Independent reference. Built in tribute to the World Bank & Pact Delve platform. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the World Bank or Pact.