Wild gold mining in Ghana is booming, poisoning people and nature By Reuters

By Maxwell Akalaare Adombila

PRESTEA-HUNI VALLEY, Ghana (Reuters) – At an unlicensed gold mine in Ghana, men in T-shirts, shorts and rubber boots wade through pools of muddy water laced with mercury, scoop out rocks with their bare hands and operate a sluice shocking as they search for the precious ore.

The derelict mine is part of a booming business that generates livelihoods and informal income streams for Ghana’s economy, even as it harms miners’ health, pollutes waterways, destroys forests and cocoa farms and fuels crime.

“It’s risky, but I just want to survive,” said one of the men at the wild cat site visited by Reuters in the Prestea-Huni Valley district of western Ghana.

The 24-year-old accounting student, who asked not to be named because he was involved in illegal activities, said he skipped classes to pan for gold because he needed money, having lost his father as a teenager.

There was no professional protective equipment at the mine. The men wore thin plastic shopping bags on their heads. One had swimming goggles and another had a bag of rice covering his torso.

The unlicensed gold mining industry, known in Ghana as “galamsey”, has grown at a breakneck pace this year as global gold prices have risen by nearly 30%, attracting new entrants.

Small-scale mines produced 1.2 million ounces of gold in the first seven months of this year, more than in all of 2023, according to data from Ghana’s mining regulator.

About 40% of Ghana’s total gold production comes from small mines, as opposed to concessions operated by multinational firms. About 70-80% of small mines are unlicensed.

POISONED PROFIT

Martin Ayisi, head of Ghana’s Minerals Commission, the mining industry regulator, said most of Galamsey’s gold was smuggled out of the country and therefore does not contribute to national gold export earnings.

For Ayisi, rising gold prices are good for Ghana, helping it recover from a severe economic crisis in 2022 that required a $3 billion IMF bailout.

“We should be able to get a lot of money and probably get out of the IMF program early,” he said, forecasting that earnings from national gold exports will double to more than $10 billion this year.

But industry experts say the lines between legal mining and galamsey are blurred, and gold from informal mines accounts for a larger proportion of revenue than authorities admit.

The dangers of galamsey, however, are not in question.

Dozens of miners have been killed in collapsing pits in recent years, according to news and rights groups, while hospitals and health centers report high numbers of early deaths from lung disease among miners and town and village residents near the mines.

They are caused by inhaling dust containing heavy metals such as lead, as well as poisonous fumes from mercury and nitric acid that miners use to extract gold from sediments.

The chemicals are then dumped on the ground or in rivers. Ghana’s water authority says mercury and heavy metals from mining have contaminated about 65 percent of water supplies.

Meanwhile, thousands of hectares (acres) of cocoa plantations and virgin forest have been destroyed by illegal miners, according to data from Global Forest Watch, an online monitoring platform.

Protesters have taken to the streets in Accra in recent weeks to criticize President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government for what they see as its failure to address these issues. “Leaders, you have failed us!” read some of the signs.

“Galamsey must stop. We want to live long. We don’t want to get sick. We don’t want to go to the hospital,” said Aboubacar Sadekh, who was participating in a march on September 22, draped. in a flag of Ghana.

The government denies inaction on the galamsey. When he came to power in 2017, Akufo-Addo pledged to crack down on the problem, and during his tenure, the government launched a crackdown, sending in soldiers to arrest illegal miners. In some cases, mining equipment was confiscated and destroyed.

ORGANIZED CRIME

Opinion polls suggest galamsey is one of the top five issues for voters ahead of the December 7 general election.

The main contenders to replace Akufo-Addo as president, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and former president John Mahama, have pledged to formalize galamsey, for example by funding a state agency to explore for gold and survey areas that locals I can mine them.

But successive governments have promised for years to tackle the problem without making much progress, partly because powerful people benefit from the industry, experts say.

Chris Aston, head of a British-backed program to regulate small-scale gold mining in Ghana, said artisanal miners are vulnerable to organized crime gangs, which provide them with upfront financing for equipment unlike other lenders.

“Pre-financing miners is a way for organized crime groups to penetrate the gold supply chain,” he said. The financiers then “ask the miners to sell back the gold they mine at a subsidized rate.”

Emmanuel Kwesi Anning, an Accra-based security consultant, said galamsey was fueling a surge in arms trafficking as those overseeing illegal mines sought armed protection against rivals or thieves.

He also said politicians and traditional rulers in some areas take a cut of the galamsey profits, further entrenching the problem.

“It became an elite consensus that they would not touch this deal.”

Ghana’s information minister did not respond to requests for comment on allegations of involvement in organized crime, arms trafficking and corruption.

A senior Ministry of National Security official, who did not want to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, said authorities were working to address the links between illegal mining, money laundering and arms trafficking.