Bright Simons
Illegal gold mining anxiety sweeps Ghana & disrupts election campaign messaging
Just weeks to the presidential elections in Ghana, middle-class concerns about illegal, irresponsible, and environmentally catastrophic gold mining have reached fever-pitch, completely derailing the campaign messaging themes of the leading political parties.
There are protests, strikes, threats of strikes, and hints of protests.
I have chronicled the journey of how Ghana got here in a previous essay.
Ghana made a Faustian pact to get to the top of Africa’s gold leagues
One way to look at the whole situation is that Ghana’s race to the top of the gold-production charts in Africa was fuelled by the steroids of irresponsible mining.
When the country overtook South Africa in 2018 as Africa’s largest gold producer, both countries were bogged down in domestic fights over illegal mining.
Avoiding the costs and inconveniences of building strong institutional foundations for gold production helped accelerate Ghana’s massive gold rush, and ensuing gold boom.
Though one could also argue that the Ghanaian authorities were more mindful than their South African couunterparts of the potential violence that could be unleashed if they pushed too far, the incontrovertible fact is that the country’s accommodating approach has boosted output.
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