Governance challenges of small-scale gold mining in Ghana: Insights from a process net-map study

Large scale mining in Ghana: a review of the implications on the host communities

“…Currently, Ghana has a number of national and international companies undertaking mining exploration in a different part of the country. Areas well noted for mining in Ghana currently include the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality, Ahafo, Akyem, Offin Dunkwa, Obuasi, Akwatia, Nsuta, Bibiani, and Konongo (Adu-baffour et al, 2021;Obiri et al, 2016). As of 2016, Ghana's share of the Global Gold production was estimated at 129 tonnes and constituted about 90% of all minerals produced in the country (Ericsson and Löf, 2019).…”

“…It is against this background that the Ghana National Land Policy as part of measures in ensuring environmental quality, discouraged the undertaking of mining operations in forest areas and in water sources (National Land Policy, 1999). However, in Ghana, mining activities have caused devastating and at times irreparable damage to the environment (Hausermann and Ferring 2018;Adu-baffour et al, 2021;). In fact, as of 1988, it was estimated that the country lost about 41.7 billion Cedis annually through environmental degradation (Amponsah-Tawiah and Dartey-Baah, 2011).…”

Socio-demographic factors affecting artisanal and small-scale mining (galamsey) operations in Ghana

“…Only a small proportion (2%) considered the support they obtained from their relative miners to be somewhat important to their wellbeing (refer to Table 4 ). The results suggest that the ASM sector is growing in numbers across local communities ( Adu-Baffour et al., 2021 ), with as high as 69.3% of the household heads in this study involved. This finding confirms an earlier finding by Kwai and Hilson (2010) in Tanzania that the majority of the rural populace are turning to ASM for employment.…”

“…It indicated that small-scale mining is exclusively preserved for citizens. Moreover, the high cost of acquiring the small-scale mining license, bureaucracy, corruption, collusion and collaboration as well as massive political interference have been highlighted as drawbacks to the majority of the local miners' inability to acquire the small-scale mining license (Kwai and Hilson, 2010;Botchwey and Crawford, 2018;Adu-Baffour et al, 2021;Gbedzi et al, 2022).…”

Sustainable Economic Planning and Distribution of Mineral Rents in Local Communities: Evidence from Ghana

“…The consequence is that negative externalities occur because private mining entities are faced with a "moral hazard" problem. Without the intervention of other affected parties (at the government and community levels), private miners have little incentive to limit their exposure to risks because they do not bear the full cost of such risks (Adu-Baffour et al, 2021).…”