The obligation
As a party to the Minamata Convention, Uganda is committed to reducing and where feasible eliminating mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining, including through national action planning and support for alternative processing.
Why the phase-down stalls
Amalgamation requires no plant, no electricity and no working capital, and it delivers a saleable product the same day. Gravity concentration plus shared cyanidation delivers better recovery but requires a fixed facility, trained operators and a payment model that survives a bad month.
Programmes that supplied equipment without a maintenance budget and an offtake channel have generally failed within two seasons. That is a design failure rather than a behavioural one.
What has worked regionally
Centralised processing hubs serving multiple licensed cooperatives, with tailings retained and reprocessed rather than discarded, have reduced mercury demand where they were paired with a guaranteed buyer. Licensed medium-scale operators adjacent to artisanal workings are the most plausible hosts for that infrastructure.