A gold rush poisons Africa’s El Dorado

The poisoned, yellow mud covers almost everything. It coats the motorbikes on which young people travel: they have metal detectors piled up on their shoulders and Katiuska boots on their feet — gifts from a Chinese company. The mud also covers the corrugated hoses that cross the open-pit gold mines, flooding this suffocating jungle of rubber and cocoa. The area extends from the north to the south of Ghana, along the border with Ivory Coast.

Here, the soil is full of gold, but on the surface, the poverty is terrifying. A three-day tour through the heart of the Ghanaian gold forest confirms that this corner of the planet is the scene of the most savage extractivism, which is being undertaken by foreign and local companies. It’s an ecological catastrophe with global reverberations.

In the villages, food is sold in small, individual quantities, while water can be purchased in 500-milliliter sachets. Young people have few options to make a living other than in the mercury-infested mines. Children grow up at the mercy of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), which attack the poorest of the poor. With no running water or decent roads to get to a clinic in time to give birth or transport vital medicines, the Gold Coast — as it was dubbed by the colonial powers — is a portrait of the paradox of plenty.

The ravages of illegal mining are so evident that galamsey — which refers to illegal small-scale gold mining in Ghana — has become a major political issue, giving rise to large protests in the capital and grand promises by the government, just weeks before the general elections. The practice is also the symbol of a deeper malaise, as well as the weariness of a youth without a future. In the background, Ghana suffers from a rampant economic crisis: rulers are accused of corruption and of being complicit in destroying the country and selling off its resources.

“We’re destroying our environment. We’re not preventing this because of personal interests. [Galamsey] is a cartel in which many people are involved […] The money goes out of the country. If it stayed here, we would be a First World power. What’s happening here is a type of modern slavery,” says Lydia Mosi, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Ghana.

“I bathe my children once a week”

Sarah Awina is a 31-year-old mother of five who lives in a village in Ghana’s Aowin district. Three of her children have a skin disease – yaws – which is associated with poor hygiene due to water shortages. About 80% of people affected by yaws are under the age of 15. Awina says that she has lost count of the number of children who have contracted the disease in her village.

 

In the villages where galamsey takes place, you can smell roasted plantains and corn. But there’s also a thick tension in the air. Mining is illegal, yet it’s carried out in plain sight, accompanied by the noisy clatter of rotary machines that drill into the ground, or the foreign pumps that flood the excavated surfaces with water. No outsiders are to be seen, except for the occasional Chinese businessman or employee. The defiant looks of some locals make it clear that it’s not advisable to stick one’s nose into their illicit and lucrative business dealings.

In the middle of the forest, near the town of Enchi, there’s a village. Alongside it are open pits. Daniel — a 33-year-old who studied to be a teacher — works there. “This is very hard work,” he sighs. “Every day, someone falls ill with malaria or something else. If I had a job as a teacher, I would leave the mine tomorrow, but I have two children. What can I do?” Daniel and his colleagues fear the news coming out of Accra, the capital, where pressure is mounting on the streets to end galamsey.

A gaunt villager listens in silence to the conversation on the edge of a large, yellow puddle. When asked what benefits the mine has brought to the village, he shrugs and declares: “None.” He hasn’t finished speaking with EL PAÍS when a dozen men — with very unfriendly looks on their faces — emerge, one by one, from the trees. Word has spread that there are some foreigners asking questions. The conversation is cut short and everyone has to disperse.

Illegal mines aren’t new, but, in recent years, they’ve multiplied. This is in step with the rise in the price of gold and the arrival of machinery from China. Artisanal mining done with shovels — which is, by nature, less efficient and, therefore, less destructive — is starkly different from machines that are capable of removing tons of soil. The latter are destroying the ecological balance of river basins and — as a result of wiping out the clean water supply — are putting the health of millions of Ghanaians at risk.

On both sides of the road — for more than 60 miles — you can see a succession of trenches filled with dirty water. These are the most visible. Then, there are the countless empty patches, due to trees having been cut down in the middle of the forest. The images recorded by the drones are devastating.

The heavy metals that are used to separate gold from the sand release toxic gases. They also penetrate the soil and flood the rivers, turning them into yellowish, unhealthy mud. Sixty percent of water surfaces are so turbid that they cannot be used, according to data released this summer by the state-controlled Ghana Water Company.

“The level of environmental destruction in recent years is unprecedented. Rivers are polluted. We’ve recorded high levels of mercury, cyanide, lead, cadmium and nickel in the water,” explains Benedicta Yayra Fosu-Mensah, a professor of Environmental Impact at the University of Ghana. She says that there’s abundant evidence of the health consequences, especially kidney and liver problems, as well as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), which affect more than a billion people in the world, typically the most impoverished.

Ghana is the world’s sixth-largest gold producer and the largest in Africa. Nearly 40% of gold profits come from small mines, compared to the large excavations done by multinational companies operating in the country. At least one million workers depend on both legal and illegal small mines to make a living.

In the first-half of this year, Ghana exported $5 billion worth of gold, or 54% of its total exports. This is a record-high figure, due in part to the vertiginous rise in the price of the metal. In July of 2024, the gold price averaged $2,338/oz, compared to around $1,268/oz in 2018. Between 70% and 80% of small mines in Ghana don’t have a license to operate, according to data cited by Reuters.

Eric Bukari — head of small-scale mining at the Ghanaian government’s Minerals Commission — tells EL PAÍS that he cannot confirm said figures. As for smuggling, he tells EL PAÍS that suspicions point to Dubai as the main destination for gold. In his interview with this newspaper, he admits that there are “individuals who operate without licenses, illegally.”

“There’s a lot of illegal mining. It’s a very big problem. It’s our biggest problem,” Bukari points out. The British government’s U.K.-Ghana Gold Programme (UKGGP) estimates that the West African country loses $2 billion a year due to smuggling from illegal mining — an industry which is increasingly exploited by criminal groups, according to official sources.

A mine worker in Ghana earns between 150 and 500 cedis a day, or the equivalent of between $9 and $30. They depend on this income to live, in the absence of alternatives. But at the same time, the local populations who live near open-pit mining suffer the toxic onslaught firsthand.

In her office at the University of Ghana, in Accra, Dr. Mosi explains why diseases — especially NTDs, which affect the poorest people — have proliferated along the border with Ivory Coast. During her interview, she notes that, for example, Buruli ulcer — her specialty — is triggered by earth movements that release bacteria. She also warns of the impact of the presence of heavy metals in the water on fishing and crops. “We’re going to have a huge problem with health and food security. We cannot even imagine the diseases that we’re going to see in 20 years. I blame our leaders for not being able to think about future generations.”

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)

Some 260 miles from the capital, in Enchi — one of the hotspots for illegal mining — Joseph Abbas Asigiri works as the director of the health service for the Aowin district, which has 142,000 inhabitants. Asigiri is pessimistic. “It gets worse in a matter of days. You can no longer wash clothes or water crops.” He explains that the biggest challenge is the lack of clean water.

Asigiri discusses the work bring done by the Research and Counselling Foundation for African Migrants (RECFAM), a local organization that builds wells and clean water points in remote areas. RECFAM also uses local radio stations to fight superstitions associated with diseases. But the scale of the disaster exceeds any possible initiative. Asigiri explains that, in his district, the number of cases has increased, especially among children with yaws disease. There are 231 confirmed cases so far this year, compared to 152 in 2023. Stagnant water also causes malaria and dengue to proliferate.

Asigiri also warns of additional collateral damage from the gold rush: “Foreigners impregnate many teenage girls and then disappear.”

“We should be planting trees instead of cutting them down to extract gold”

Lydia Mosi is a professor of molecular biology at the University of Ghana. She’s also one of the world’s leading researchers on the transmission pathways of Buruli ulcer, the exact nature of which is still unknown. Mosi says the situation in the region is very serious and believes that various political and business actors are involved — that’s why the current situation has arisen.

In Nyanney Camp — a small village near Enchi — the ever-smiling Alfred Mbinglo runs RECFAM, the organization that works hand-in-hand with the Spanish ANESVAD Foundation, which specializes in NTDs. ANESVAD had a supporting role in organizing the trip taken by EL PAÍS, as well as in preparing this report.

Dozens of people have dropped by the local health center today. They show their legs and the marks on their children’s skin. One of them is Sarah Awina, who has come in with her five children. They’re huddled on her lap. Three of them have legs covered in marks, which indicate that they’ve contracted yaws. The eldest girl pulls down her tights to hide the marks. Awina says that she washes her children once a week as best she can, while emphasizing that “the water in the village is undrinkable”

“For two years now, all the rivers have been destroyed,” she informs EL PAÍS. “In the past, the water flowed clean. The mines have only left us rubbish.” Her case isn’t exceptional. Mbinglo explains that, in 2022, Aowin was declared a yaws-endemic area, precisely thanks to the data collected by his organization regarding the spread of the disease among the population.

Nana Konama Kotei — director of the National Buruli Ulcer Control and Yaws Eradication Programme — offers a very revealing figure. She says that there are nine sub-districts in Aowin and that, in eight of them, the prevalence of yaws has skyrocketed. The one where there are no cases is the one where galamsey is banned. Both Buruli ulcer and yaws are diseases that affect mainly children and cause deformities in the joints, bend the tibia and nasal bones and leave the face disfigured for life. They can also degenerate into carcinomas. “These diseases have always been present, but environmental degradation has increased the cases,” Kotei affirms. In the case of Buruli ulcer, she explains, the stagnation of water increases the humidity: this helps the microorganisms that cause the disease.

“Environmental degradation increases diseases”

Dr Nana Konama Kotei is the director of the Ghanaian Ministry of Health’s National Buruli Ulcer Control and Yaws Eradication Programme. These are two of the 21 tropical diseases that the World Health Organization (WHO) considers to be neglected. They affect more than one billion people worldwide. Kotei explains that the prevalence of the diseases she studies has skyrocketed in the mining sub-districts.

The good news is that antibiotics are available to treat Sarah Awina’s children. The bad news is that the biggest problem is accessing these remote villages, which are poorly connected by roads that are in an atrocious state and impassable during the rainy season. It’s difficult to understand why mining companies haven’t even contributed to improving transportation, especially since Chinese firms have spent years expanding the Port of Takoradi, in the south, through which other types of raw materials — such as oil, natural gas and manganese — leave the country.

In Takoradi, it’s easy to spot Chinese citizens at the small airport that links this southern city with Accra. Proof of their growing presence came earlier in October, when the Chinese group Zijin Mining purchased the large gold mine of Akyem, one of the largest in Africa.

Smuggling

Unrefined gold vanishes once young Ghanaians extract it from polluted, mosquito-infested waters. The mineral is taken away in helicopters, or by road. These are the dynamics that African leaders often refer to in international forums, when they call for an end to the removal of raw materials and for production chains — as well as their added value — to be based in their own countries. Travelling through Ghana’s jungle in search of answers serves to confirm not only the enormous magnitude of the problem and the impact on the population, but also that part of the responsibility lies with the country’s own leaders, who — in recent years — have launched campaigns to ban the practice, only to allow the phenomenon to then resurge.

“It’s very complex, because there are many people involved. Both foreigners and locals,” says an official source, who asks to remain anonymous. “[Mining] is dominated by the Chinese, but there are many Ghanaian middlemen, agents and facilitators, as well as young people who work in the mines and have no other options. Politicians cannot say they’re going to close it down, because they would lose many votes,” the source adds.

In the nighttime, Nana Payin II — the tufuhene (or second-highest-ranked traditional leader) of Enchi — watches a Champions League soccer match on a giant TV screen in his otherwise bare-walled house. He’s dressed in a brown suit with glitter and oriental tassels. The meeting is formal, with respect for traditions. Who sits where, who speaks first…

“There have always been mines here, since World War II. And they were exploited by the whites, the colonial powers. [These mines] are the same ones they left behind.” He makes it clear that his concern about the current situation is limited. “If [the people] don’t have work and they know there’s gold in the ground, will they go hungry, no matter how illegal it is? You can’t talk about prohibition without addressing the population’s problems. Galamsey destroys the environment, but it creates work.”

Nana Payin II, however, denies any responsibility, arguing that mining permits are granted in Accra. But Ghana’s complex power structure means that no mine can be opened without permission from traditional chiefs on the ground. They are the custodians of the land.

The number of licences for small-scale mining rose to 2,400 between 2012 and 2024, according to figures released by the government’s minerals commission in October — a huge increase. Critics say that, instead of fighting the mines, the chiefs have legalized them.

Less cocoa, more expensive chocolate

Another raw material — cocoa, a traditional crop in this area — is also a collateral victim of mining. The loss fuels the global repercussions of this crisis. Ghana — which produces 60% of the world’s cocoa, along with Ivory Coast — has seen its harvests plummet in recent years, contributing to the rise in the global price of chocolate. The climate emergency, the price of fertilizers and numerous pests are part of the explanation, but there are other factors, such as the sale of agricultural land to mining — which is a much more profitable sector — and the consequences of excavation on the humidity of the soil, which harms cocoa growth.

Official initiatives to promote agriculture — as well as warnings from experts about deforestation and the destruction of renewable resources — are of little use.

Land is changing hands at a dizzying pace. Data from Global Forest Watch indicates that Ghana lost some 18,000 hectares of forest in 2022, which was the largest loss recorded in a country that year. Deforestation is attributed to agriculture, but also to mining. In 2022, 19,000 hectares of cocoa were destroyed by illegal mining, according to data from the umbrella organization for the sector, the Ghana Cocoa Board.

The blame — at least in this region, according to Nana Payin II and many local observers — lies with foreign investors. “The Chinese are behind it. They’re [using] Ghanaians as frontmen, but they’re the ones who provide the capital, the machinery… they’re the ones who take the gold.”

On the other hand, Samuel Adu Gyamfi — the government delegate in Enchi — blames the political opposition for the lack of unity in the face of a national emergency. The truth is that, in Ghana’s two-party system, neither party has been able to put an end to galamsey over the course of successive administrations. Gyamfi believes that part of the solution lies in Accra and Beijing sitting down to negotiate. Until now, the Chinese government has argued that it’s Ghana’s responsibility to control illegal activities committed on its territory, even if said activities involve Chinese citizens. “If we went and arrested five Chinese [investors], we wouldn’t be where we are. We must attack the source of financing,” Gyamfi believes.

Hours after the government delegate tries to offer solutions to the world’s problems from his office, Isaac — a tall and strong 33-year-old man — takes a break. Under a scorching sun, he climbs the small hill that separates his village near the Ivorian border from the mine where he works. Sitting under a mango tree, he takes off his Katiuska boots, which he wears without socks. He wrings them out upside down: a yellow liquid dribbles out.

The village of Achimfo Adjeikrom is located in a beautiful valley. It’s difficult to access: it lies at the end of an impossible road, made of reddish earth and full of deep potholes. Today, a crowd of children are learning in the open air, singing loudly. According to their teacher, up to 30 of them suffer from neglected skin diseases.

The houses in the village are made of adobe — without bathrooms or running water — and mountains of rubbish are piled up in the corners. At the entrance and exit of the village, there are two large gold mines, where the children also work on weekends. The hammering of the excavators competes with the melody of the little ones.

Isaac is wearing a worn-out t-shirt and has stains and wounds on his legs. He doesn’t want to be photographed, because his mine is like all the others around it: illegal. He’s 33-years-old and has been in the trade for 10 years. Until recently, he was a “frontman” for a Chinese investor. Today, he works for a Togolese businessman. He estimates that he mines for 12 hours a day, extracting about 15 grams of gold. He earns 100 cedis a day, but he only gets paid when he works. “If it were up to me, I would work every day, but sometimes, the machine breaks down, or they have to open a new clearing in the forest. [On those days], they don’t let us work.” He’s aware that the pressure is growing to put a stop to an activity that’s polluting half the country. “If the leaders say that we have to stop, we’ll stop,” he shrugs calmly.

Isaac doesn’t have good memories of his Chinese bosses. He says that he felt abandoned by them. He describes to EL PAÍS how he risked his life to catch thieves who had stolen gold from the mine. When he returned it to his bosses, they promised to take him to China, as a reward for his efforts. But the businessmen disappeared from one day to the next, in search of greener pastures: they’re now in Mali. Isaac was given just enough money to get to Togo — his home country. The promise of travelling to the Asian El Dorado ended up being a dream that never came true.