Flood of illegal gold miners endangering Ghana’s cocoa sector

GHANAIAN cocoa farmers are abandoning the crop despite a trebling in prices in favour of illegal gold mining, said the Financial Times.It reported that price controls prevent farmers from benefiting from the cocoa windfall which has pushed many of them into gold production.The price of gold has increased 37% in the past 12 months owing to a combination of central bank purchases, geopolitical distress as well as concerns about US debt, inflation, and a move by some nations towards de-dollarisation.The increase in illegal gold mining – known as ‘galamsey’ in Ghana – has also resulted in the pollution of cocoa-bearing land, said the newspaper.Galamsey’s insatiable rise is intensifying a crisis that saw cocoa yields in the west African country plunge 20% last year, said the Financial Times.Crops in Ghana and Ivory Coast, which together grow more than half the world’s cocoa, have been dwindling since the 2020-2021 season, pummelled by climate change, disease outbreaks and chronic under-investment, it said.“Anyone that goes up country sees it wherever they go. And it devastates every farm it touches,” Antonie Fountain, MD of the Voice Network, a non-profit focused on sustainability in cocoa told the newspaper. “Once galamsey has been in your farms, the soil and water are a contaminated wasteland.”About 40% of its total gold output comes from small-scale mines, as opposed to concessions operated by multi-national firms. Some 70% to 80% of the small mines are unlicensed, according to a report by Reuters last year.“Galamsey has almost become like a drug cartel funded by people very close to power,” said Enoch Randy Aikins, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies. “If you have party officials and influential people involved, it becomes very difficult for any government to crack the whip.”The post Flood of illegal gold miners endangering Ghana’s cocoa sector appeared first on Miningmx.Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com