Map the Environmental Cost of Illegal Gold Mining Along the Zamfara River Basin

Zamfara State has the highest rate of lead poisoning ever recorded outside of a war zone, caused largely by artisanal gold processing in communities like Bagega and Dareta. Children have died. Adults have been left with permanent neurological damage. Yet the practice continues because families have no other income source and the scale of contamination is poorly documented at a level government or NGOs can use to prioritise action. Your task is to produce an evidence brief using publicly available data: satellite imagery from Google Earth Engine or Sentinel Hub, published epidemiological studies, NGO reports, and Nigerian Geological Survey data where accessible. You are not expected to travel to Zamfara. You are expected to triangulate sources and produce something more coherent than any single existing document. The deliverable is a 1,500 to 2,500 word evidence brief plus at least two original maps or data visualisations showing the spatial extent of mining activity and, where data allows, correlations with health outcomes or water contamination. Include a one-page summary written for a non-technical audience (a local government chairman, a donor, a journalist). Good work will be transparent about data gaps and will not overstate what the evidence supports. The best submissions will identify the single most actionable finding, the one thing a state government with limited capacity could plausibly do in the next 12 months based on what the data shows.