There is a particular cruelty in the fact that the same earth, which made Ghana the Gold Coast, is now being poisoned by the hunger for gold. The Chronicle has watched successive governments promise to end illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey. We have reported the task forces, the crackdowns, the presidential decrees and the tearful vows made at podiums.
We have also, with equal diligence, reported what followed: excavators returning to the riverbanks, deported nationals re-arrested at the same sites and rivers running brown with mercury and sediment. Ghana cannot afford for us to keep writing the same story.
Let us be precise about what is at stake, because imprecision has long enabled comfortable inaction.
As of September 2024, 60 percent of Ghana’s water bodies had been polluted by galamsey activity. The Pra, Ankobra and Offin rivers, once the lifeblood of communities now carry mercury, arsenic and lead at concentrations far above safety standards, according to peer-reviewed research.
In some mining areas, arsenic levels in the soil exceed safe limits by more than 4,000 percent. Ghana’s own Environmental Protection Authority described the situation, in 2025, as an urgent public health emergency. These are not activist claims -they are government findings.
The economic toll compounds the environmental one. Galamsey is estimated to cost the nation more than $2.3 billion annually in lost revenue and smuggled gold, according to the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington-based policy institution that provides nonpartisan research and analysis to global decision-makers.
More than 100,000 acres of cocoa farmland have been destroyed, striking directly at a crop that accounts for nearly 10 percent of Ghana’s exports. Water treatment costs have tripled in affected districts. Some analysts warn that, at the current rate of contamination, Ghana may face freshwater shortages severe enough to require imports by 2030.
The foreign dimension of this crisis demands frank acknowledgement. Between 2008 and 2013, more than 50,000 Chinese nationals entered Ghana to mine gold illegally, according to the Africa Defense Forum (ADF). The changfa machine, which dredges riverbeds for alluvial gold and deposits mercury-contaminated water directly back into rivers, has been among the primary instruments of destruction.
Arrests continue, deportations continue and yet the pattern repeats: arrest, deportation, return. That revolving door does not suggest a system incapable of catching criminals. It suggests one with insufficient will to keep them out or in documented cases, a vested interest in permitting their return.
President John Dramani Mahama himself has stated that “our own people,” spanning party affiliates, traditional authorities, and social networks, are embedded in the galamsey trade. That confession speaks to the depth of the crisis Ghana now confronts.
Illegal miners have routinely operated with impunity, shielded by officials, politicians, and traditional authorities in exchange for private payments. As of this writing, the Black Volta, which rises in the Baoulé Hills of Southwestern Burkina Faso is under active assault in areas such as Bole, in the Savanna Region, the hometown of President John Mahama.
The disappearance of more than 500 seized excavators under a previous administration is emblematic of the rot. Seventy percent of mining sites across Ghana’s four main mining regions are now operating illegally. That figure is not a failure of law. It is a failure of political will, compounded by corruption at multiple levels of the state.
President Mahama’s administration has taken some early steps. A national tracking system for more than 1,000 pieces of heavy mining equipment was announced in January 2026, alongside a new medium-scale licensing category. These are meaningful, if modest, beginnings. Activists who have watched the cycle of promise and betrayal are entitled to their scepticism, and they are right to demand a comprehensive roadmap rather than isolated gestures.
The Chronicle holds no brief for any political party -we hold a brief for Ghana. What Ghana’s interests require is clear: an independent prosecutorial unit with the mandate to charge politically exposed persons linked to galamsey; mandatory gold traceability aligned with international standards; serious investment in alternative livelihoods for artisanal mining communities, without which enforcement will always breed resentment rather than compliance; and unambiguous diplomatic pressure on China to take co-responsibility for the conduct of its nationals on Ghanaian soil.
The Pra River does not belong to any political party. The Offin carries no party colours. They belong to the Ghanaian people and they are being systematically destroyed without the blink of the eye – what a pity!
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