Ghana’s illegal gold mines

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2024

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ghana is a global gold mining powerhouse and Africa's biggest producer.

The informal mining sector of gold – known locally as “galamsey” - is a big election issue here. There have been recent marches demanding tougher action against illegal miners in Accra. But illegal mining is also a major source of employment. More than a million Ghanaians make their living from galamsey.

We hear from local galamsey miners and look at the negative impact this industry is having on both the workers in terms of health, the environment, and the wider community.

(Picture: Man holding a bucket in an open-pit gold mine in Ghana.)

Presented and produced by Ed Butler

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, I'm out in the northern region. We stepped off the road.
0:07.0	And I just walked into an open field. There's a series of trenches here. They've just been dug.
0:14.9	And there are some guys, plain as day, looking for gold.
0:20.5	I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily here on the BBC World Service
0:24.7	where today I'm spending time with Ghana's illegal gold miners, Gallum say, as the industry's known
0:32.1	around here. How long you've been working this land, you guys?
0:36.9	Throughout this. But you don't have a land, you guys? Three days.
0:38.5	But you don't have a license for this?
0:40.0	No, no.
0:40.8	You don't.
0:42.3	Is that a problem?
0:43.9	No.
0:44.9	It's not a problem.
0:50.2	The land is just there for everybody to just dig and get a piece of gold for his own. The land is just there for everybody to just dig and get a piece of gold for his own.
0:56.4	The land is just there for them.
0:58.6	But all this indiscriminate digging comes at a price, it seems.
1:03.5	It's poisoning the rivers and destroying the farms.
1:06.8	As Ghana approaches an election, more and more voters are angry.
1:11.9	It doesn't make any sense for us to be in a country where everybody, the civilians, have been poisoned.
1:16.9	It's a life or death matter, and every Ghanaian person needs to treat it as such.
1:20.5	We have a fundamental problem, and we need to be fixed.
1:32.0	So I'm coming to a place called Pudo in the middle of the national forest.
	...

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