How it began
Lake Assal is a crater lake in central Djibouti, about 120 kilometers west of the capital. It lies 155 meters below sea level, the lowest point on land in Africa. Its water is roughly ten times saltier than the sea, and evaporation has left a white salt plain on its western and northwestern side.
Afar and Issa nomads have taken salt from the banks for a very long time. Historians estimate that the trade has gone on since about the 6th century. It created the caravan routes that link the lake to the Ethiopian highlands.
How it works
The work is done by hand. Men gather at the salt flat early in the morning and break the crust with hand axes, cutting out slabs until around midday, when the heat becomes too great. The slabs are loaded on camels, each carrying up to about 150 kilograms.
The lake also yields something unusual: natural spheres of salt, formed when small crystals stick together and roll on the lake bed until they are polished round. Men wade into the water to collect them in baskets, and women sort them by size, from grains the size of caviar to balls as large as small peaches.
How it spread
From the lake, caravans walked to the Ethiopian highlands, a journey that can take up to five weeks with several fixed stops. In southern Abyssinia the salt was bartered for coffee, ivory, musk and, historically, slaves, and it was a source of wealth for the peoples who controlled the lake.
Outsiders moved in during the colonial period. By 1893 the French government had sold the businessman Léon Chefneux a fifty-year exclusive right to refine and export Assal salt, while reserving part of the lake where local people could take salt without tax.
Where it stands today
Semi-commercial production by small private firms began in 1988. Output peaked between 1998 and 2000, when war between Eritrea and Ethiopia cut Ethiopia off from Eritrean salt and Djibouti filled the gap at high prices, which is when the salt became known as white gold. Four concessions were awarded in 2002, and production reached 110,000 tonnes in 2008. A Chinese-funded industrial plant has since begun work.
The hand trade survives beside it. In 2019 a 63-year-old Afar salt cutter told Al Jazeera he still took ten camels to Ethiopian markets, as his father and grandfather had, and sold salt to tourists and foreign soldiers. A railway to Ethiopia has raised fears that the caravan route will become obsolete. The lake is a protected zone under Djibouti's 2000 environmental plan, which called for salt extraction to be managed.
