Africa Mining Watch trains journalists to spot illegal mines from space

Overview

Updated May 24

Spotting a fresh mining pit in the Congo Basin used to take months of ground reporting and a small fortune in plane tickets. On April 22, about 25 African journalists logged into an online mapathon and learned to find one in minutes, using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and a machine-learning model trained to recognize the bare-earth scar of an open pit.

The training is the soft launch of Africa Mining Watch, a tool built by the Pulitzer Center, Code for Africa and Earth Genome. A public release is planned for July. The platform copies the playbook of Amazon Mining Watch, which has already sparked investigations into illegal gold mining in Brazil, Spain, Venezuela and the United States.

Why it matters

Reporters covering Congo Basin mining can now see new pits the week they appear, not months later when communities finally complain.

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Key Indicators

Journalists trained

African reporters joined the Earth Day mapathon, most of them already covering mining.

Partner organizations

Pulitzer Center, Code for Africa and Earth Genome built the tool together.

July 2026

Public launch

Open-source release planned to follow the journalist training period.

Countries on the predecessor

Amazon Mining Watch covers all nine Amazonian countries; the Africa build aims for similar continental scope.

Voices

Curated perspectives — historical figures and your fellow readers.

Ever wondered what historical figures would say about today's headlines?

Organizations Involved

Pulitzer Center

Journalism nonprofit

Co-founder and journalist trainer for Africa Mining Watch

A Washington-based nonprofit that funds and trains journalists on under-covered international stories.

Code for Africa

Civic technology network

Lead data and product partner

The continent's largest network of civic-tech and data-journalism teams, with labs in more than 20 African countries.

Earth Genome

Environmental data nonprofit

Model and infrastructure builder

A nonprofit that builds machine-learning pipelines on satellite imagery for environmental monitoring.

Timeline

October 2022 July 2026

5 events Latest: July 2026

Tap a bar to jump to that date

July 2026
Planned public launch
Latest Milestone

Partners say africaminingwatch.org will open to the public, with detection layers and an open data download.
July 2026
April 2026
Earth Day mapathon trains 25 African journalists
Training

Reporters from across the continent join an online mapathon. Earth Genome staff walk them through reading satellite tiles and flagging suspected mines.
April 22nd, 2026
Africa Mining Watch partnership announced
Announcement

Code for Africa publishes the partnership announcement with the Pulitzer Center and Earth Genome on Medium.
April 20th, 2026
April 2025
Amazon platform moves to quarterly updates
Capability

Amazon Mining Watch begins near-real-time quarterly detection of new gold-mining fronts, proving the model can run at production cadence.
April 2025
October 2022
Amazon Mining Watch launches
Precedent

Earth Genome, Amazon Conservation and the Pulitzer Center release the first AI-driven public map of gold-mining deforestation across all nine Amazonian countries.
October 2022

Scenarios

Africa Mining Watch goes live on schedule in July 2026

Likely Resolves by Aug 31, 2026

Discussed by: Code for Africa, Pulitzer Center and Earth Genome in their joint announcement

The partners hit their stated July target. The public site at africaminingwatch.org exposes a clickable mining-detection map and an open data download, mirroring the Amazon Mining Watch site. A planned launch on the Amazon model has clear product precedent, and the team already has trained reporters waiting.

First published investigation cites Africa Mining Watch data

Likely Resolves by Apr 22, 2027

Discussed by: Pulitzer Center's Rainforest Investigations Network and Nieman Lab

Within months of training, at least one reporter publishes a story that names Africa Mining Watch as a data source. The Amazon precedent moved from launch to published investigation in roughly the same window, with stories in Brazil, Spain, Venezuela and the United States. Mining beats in Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa are obvious candidates.

An African government formally pushes back on the tool

Possible Resolves by Apr 22, 2027

Discussed by: Mining-sector analysts and press-freedom groups familiar with extractives reporting

A government or large miner challenges the platform. Possible forms include a defamation suit against a reporter who uses the data, a takedown demand to the host, or denied accreditation for partner journalists. Extractives reporting is among the most legally risky beats on the continent, and the Amazon project drew political heat from miners and local officials.

Platform expands beyond gold to other minerals or to Southeast Asia

Possible Resolves by End of 2027

Discussed by: Earth Genome project notes and Pulitzer Center's tri-region Rainforest Investigations Network

The partners broaden the detection model beyond gold-style open pits, or extend the same approach to the third rainforest region Pulitzer already covers. The mining-detector code is open-source and the Pulitzer Center already runs reporters in Southeast Asia, so the marginal cost of a new region is mostly model training data.

Historical Context

3 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.

February 2014

Global Forest Watch launch (2014)

The World Resources Institute launched Global Forest Watch with Google, the University of Maryland and about 40 other partners. It put near-real-time deforestation alerts on a public web map, built on Landsat imagery and the Hansen forest-loss dataset.

Then

Within a year, governments in Indonesia and Peru and NGOs in the Congo Basin used the alerts to direct enforcement and reporting. Newsrooms cited the data in dozens of investigations.

Now

Global Forest Watch became permanent reference infrastructure for environmental reporting and accountability, with more than three million users by 2024.

Why this matters now

It is the closest analog for what Africa Mining Watch is trying to be: a public, satellite-driven dataset that both watchdogs and reporters can plug into. Adoption was rapid once the data was free and clickable.

2014 onward

Bellingcat and the rise of open-source satellite reporting (2014 onward)

Eliot Higgins founded Bellingcat in 2014. The team used commercial satellite imagery and social-media geolocation to reconstruct the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and later mapped Russian forces in eastern Ukraine and Syria.

Then

Bellingcat investigations were cited by the Dutch Safety Board and the Joint Investigation Team that indicted suspects in the MH17 case.

Now

Open-source intelligence using satellite data became a standard method in investigative journalism, with units at the New York Times, BBC and Reuters.

Why this matters now

Africa Mining Watch tries to do for environmental reporters what Bellingcat did for conflict reporters: turn satellite imagery from a specialist resource into an everyday newsroom tool.

October 2022

Amazon Mining Watch launch (2022)

Earth Genome, Amazon Conservation and the Pulitzer Center's Rainforest Investigations Network released the first AI-driven public map of gold-mining deforestation across all nine Amazonian countries. The site used a convolutional neural network on Sentinel-2 imagery to flag suspected pits at ten-meter resolution.

Then

Within two years, reporters used the data to publish investigations in Brazil, Spain, Venezuela and the United States, several focused on mining inside Indigenous reserves.

Now

The platform moved to quarterly updates in 2025 and became a standard reference for Amazon environmental coverage, including by Mongabay and MAAP.

Why this matters now

Africa Mining Watch is a direct port of this project with the same lead engineering team. The Amazon timeline is the best guide to what the Africa version is likely to produce and when.