On November 27, 2025, a packed auditorium at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development’s (CDD-Ghana) 20th Kronti ne Akwamu public lecture listened intently as Erastus Asare Donkor, a prominent broadcast journalist and environmental advocate, delivered a stirring call to action. He urged Ghanaians to break free from what he described as a "gold mentality"—the entrenched belief that gold mining is the only viable path to economic survival—arguing that this mindset lies at the heart of the nation’s ongoing crisis with illegal mining, or 'galamsey.'
Donkor’s plea couldn’t have come at a more pivotal moment. Ghana’s recent economic rebound, which began in 2024, has been widely celebrated by government officials and international observers. The cedi has strengthened, inflation has dipped, and gold exports have soared, all underpinned by favorable global commodity prices. However, as ModernGhana reported on December 1, 2025, much of this economic success is built on the rapid—and often illegal—expansion of small-scale gold mining. The environmental and public health costs, Donkor warned, are mounting at an unsustainable rate.
The numbers tell a sobering story. For years, large-scale mining companies dominated Ghana’s gold output, but between January and September 2025, small-scale miners overtook them, accounting for 52% of national production, according to ModernGhana. This shift is particularly puzzling given that only 35 new small-scale mining licenses were issued in 2025, while 278 were revoked in the same period. The technology used by legal small-scale miners hasn’t changed, raising uncomfortable questions about the true source of the extra gold flooding the market.
Further complicating matters is the launch of the GHANA GOLDBOD in April 2025—a government institution designed to buy and export gold from small-scale miners to boost foreign exchange and strengthen national reserves. The 2025 budget allocated $279 million to GoldBod, yet the Finance Ministry had not disbursed these funds as of late October, ModernGhana revealed. Despite this, GoldBod and its predecessor, the Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC), reported record gold purchases totaling about 81.719 tonnes between January and October 2025. For context, the Bank of Ghana’s Gold Purchase Programme (2022–2024) averaged just 19.6 tonnes per year, and it operated with strict traceability and due diligence—safeguards that GoldBod currently lacks.
"The only logical explanation is that much of this gold is coming from illegal mining operations," ModernGhana’s analysis stated bluntly. Without traceability systems in place, GoldBod risks legitimizing gold from galamsey activities, effectively laundering illicit output through state channels.
Meanwhile, the environmental toll is staggering. At the CDD-Ghana lecture, Donkor painted a grim picture: major rivers such as the Pra, Offin, Ankobra, Birim, and Tano are now heavily polluted with toxic metals, in some cases registering more than twice the World Health Organization’s safety limits. In mining communities like Talensi, air contamination from the open burning of mercury has reached levels far above international safety thresholds. "These exposures are translating into alarming health outcomes, including rising birth defects in galamsey-affected districts, with two-thirds of recent cases traced to mothers living in or around mining zones," Donkor reported.
The government’s own data supports these warnings. In June 2025, the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources announced that turbidity levels in major water bodies had reached between 5,000 and 12,000 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU)—well above acceptable limits. Many cities and towns now lack access to clean drinking water because their main sources have either been contaminated or shut down due to galamsey pollution, according to ModernGhana.
The scale of illegal mining is further underscored by the influx of heavy machinery. In June 2025, the Minister for Transport revealed that over 200 excavators—equipment not typically used by artisanal miners—were entering Ghana daily through Tema Port, with nearly 3,000 more expected by year’s end. This surge in industrial-scale machinery, alongside a declining number of licensed miners, points to a troubling trend: illegal operators are increasingly running large, unregulated mining operations, exacerbating environmental destruction.
Despite the gravity of the crisis, government funding to combat illegal mining remains woefully inadequate. The 2025 and 2026 budgets allocated just GH¢50 million and GH¢150 million, respectively, to the fight—a fraction of what’s needed to address the scale of the problem, as ModernGhana highlighted.
Donkor’s lecture didn’t just diagnose the problem; it offered a roadmap for reform. He called for the Forestry Commission to be upgraded to a para-military status, better equipped and monitored to prevent the "open looting" of forest reserves, often justified as reclamation efforts. He also urged the Minerals Commission to operationalize an excavator-tracking system to prevent the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of heavy machinery in mining zones.
Crucially, Donkor recommended that water bodies and key biodiversity corridors be declared national security zones, enforced by a decentralized and well-resourced National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) free from political interference. He also stressed the need for robust alternative livelihood programs—investments in skills training, agriculture, eco-tourism, and local enterprise—to give communities viable economic options beyond gold mining. "It is also important to note that we cannot enforce without empathy. The fight against galamsey must go hand in hand with alternative livelihood programmes. People need something to live for and live on. We must invest in skills, agriculture, eco-tourism, and local enterprise. Otherwise, we will only be pushing poverty from one pit to another," Donkor said at the lecture, as reported by Graphic Online.
He didn’t shy away from holding local officials accountable, either. Donkor argued that Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) should be held responsible for environmental crimes within their jurisdictions. "Galamsey is not just an environmental crisis. It is a test of leadership, of governance and of conscience. If we fail this test, our rivers will carry the memory of our silence. Our forests will not forgive us," he declared, his words echoing through the hall.
Underlying all these recommendations is a call for a shift in mindset—a move away from viewing gold as the sole source of prosperity. "Let’s kill the gold mentality as the only major means of living. Let’s revive the NCCE and let it play its vital role of educating on the effects of galamsey. What we lack is not strategy; it is political will and moral courage," Donkor insisted.
The choices facing Ghana are stark. As the country celebrates its economic gains, the true cost—poisoned rivers, devastated forests, rising health crises, and a shrinking future for sustainable development—cannot be ignored. The time for decisive action, as both Donkor and ModernGhana argue, is now. If Ghana is to secure a future where both people and the environment can thrive, the nation must muster the political will and moral courage to chart a new course—one that values sustainability over short-term profit, and collective well-being over individual gain.
The test, as Donkor put it, is not just one of policy, but of national conscience. Ghana’s rivers and forests are watching—and history will remember what choices are made today.
