Ghana must shift its fight against illegal mining from raids and seizures toward a system that makes responsible small-scale mining more profitable than illegal operations, Economic Policy Analyst Senyo Hosi said.
Hosi, a prominent advocate in the campaign against illegal mining, said the current enforcement-led approach has repeatedly failed to prevent miners from returning to sites after security operations, making a change in strategy necessary.
Hosi, who has been involved in advocacy against illegal mining, says his position has evolved from simply fighting galamsey to addressing the economic conditions that make the activity difficult to eliminate. He now argues that responsible small-scale mining must become more financially attractive than illegal operations.
“I rarely join a fight unless I can see a path to victory. I honestly believed the campaign against galamsey was such a fight, and I entered it with full conviction,” Hosi said. “But conviction must be matched by learning.”
He said the objective should no longer be simply to stop artisanal and small-scale mining, but to transform how the sector operates while protecting livelihoods and improving environmental outcomes.
“What is not winnable is our present strategy of simply trying to stop it. We must win differently, with practicality, flexibility and a clear definition of success: cleaner rivers, reclaimed lands, traceable lawful production, protected and recovered forest reserves and good food quality,” he said.
Hosi’s proposal comes as he argues that illegal mining remains economically attractive in communities where formal employment opportunities are limited. He said galamsey can pay Junior High School dropouts between GHS2,000 and GHS10,000 a week, creating a financial incentive that enforcement operations cannot easily overcome.
He cited Germany’s Ambassador to Ghana, Frederik Landshöft, who said: “Around one million people are estimated to work in artisanal and small-scale mining. That number should make us think because behind the debate about illegal mining are not only excavators, polluted rivers and degraded lands, there are also people, young people looking for a job, families looking for income, communities looking for opportunities and better future and we should not lose sight of that.”
From Raids to Returns
Hosi pointed to recent events in Osino as evidence of the limitations of the current enforcement model, saying miners returned to an illegal site days after the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat drove them out.
“The pattern seldom changes: the task force leaves, the miners return and galamsey restarts,” he said. “If every raid merely resets the clock, then what exactly are we changing and what are we winning?”
He also questioned whether the government’s measurement of enforcement activity adequately captures whether the underlying problem is improving.
According to Hosi, politicians often count excavators seized and miners arrested but do not regularly publish whether rivers have become cleaner, degraded land has been restored or lawful mining has become safer and more profitable.
“Without those measures, we cannot tell enforcement from performance,” he said.
He proposed that progress instead be measured against agreed baselines and independently reported, including indicators for water quality, land reclamation, lawful production and the protection and recovery of forest reserves.
Economics of Enforcement
Hosi argued that the difficulty in shutting down illegal mining entirely is partly rooted in its economic importance to communities and the wider mining industry.
He said a sudden shutdown would cut incomes in mining communities and disrupt local commerce, while also affecting an industry he says accounts for 67.4% of Ghana’s export receipts in 2025.
The result, he argued, creates a difficult policy trade-off for successive governments, which may face immediate economic and political consequences from aggressive disruption while environmental recovery produces benefits more slowly.
“Successive governments therefore retreat to the easier performance: strong rhetoric, periodic operations and little disruption of the interests that keep galamsey alive,” Hosi said.
His argument is that the policy challenge is therefore not simply enforcement, but changing the economic incentives that make illegal mining attractive.
Technology Could Raise Gold Recovery
Hosi’s proposed alternative centres on increasing the amount of gold recovered from ore while reducing environmental damage.
He said galamsey operators have told him conventional methods recover about 30% of available gold, while the CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Mines has estimated recovery from illegal mining at about 40%.
By contrast, Hosi said experts he consulted believe better geological data, mercury-free processing, closed-water systems and professional mine planning could raise recovery to 95%, comparable with major mining operations.
That would allow responsible small-scale operators to recover substantially more gold while processing less ore and disturbing less land, according to Hosi.
The challenge, he acknowledged, is the capital required to make the transition.
“The key catch here is that it requires major investments and training in equipment, processes and people,” he said. “Galamseyers will not invest in these, but government can and must, either on its own or through its facilitation.”
His proposed model would have government support miners with equipment, processes, infrastructure, geological information and technical capacity, with a transparent share of the additional value generated from higher recovery used to finance those investments, reclamation, monitoring and traceability.
A New Bargain for Small-Scale Mining
Hosi described the proposed arrangement as a new bargain between government and small-scale miners.
Under the model, government would help miners formalise and modernise their operations, while miners would adopt responsible practices, improve recovery and repay the investment from their additional income.
The intended outcome would be to preserve mining-related jobs and community incomes while increasing lawful gold production and foreign-exchange earnings and reducing damage to land and water.
“The bargain is clear: government helps miners formalise and modernise; miners adopt responsible practices, increase recovery and repay the investment from their additional income,” Hosi said.
He also called for greater transparency around public investment in the sector, including an independently verified scorecard for every mining district.
The scorecard, he said, should show whether government investments are reaching miners and whether they are producing measurable improvements in livelihoods, lawful output, safety, reclamation and water quality.
For Hosi, the central test of Ghana’s anti-galamsey policy should therefore move beyond the number of operations conducted to whether the economic system supporting illegal mining has changed.
“We can win the fight against galamsey but only by changing how we fight, measuring outcomes and refusing to mistake activity for progress,” he said.
