Accra/Geneva, 4 June 2025
Ghana’s artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector is undergoing significant transformation amid growing criminal infiltration, foreign involvement, and environmental degradation. A new report, based on three years of fieldwork, satellite analysis, and interviews, provides an evidence-based mapping of illicit mining, showing how informal operations are reshaping local economies, environments, and power structures.
“Ghana’s gold sector continues to expand and evolve, including illicit mining, processing and trade of gold. While Western and Ashanti remain long-standing ASGM hotspots, newer fronts are opening up. The
Savannah region, for instance, has seen a sharp rise in activity over the past decade—only 18% of sites
surveyed there were over 10 years old, compared to about one-third in the Western region. This is also
contributing to high rates of gold smuggling, with estimates valuing the illicit trade to be worth more than USD 1 billion annually,” according to Marcena Hunter, Director of Extractives at the Global Initiative.
The report demonstrates how criminal actors, including transnational networks, are benefiting from weak
governance and regulatory gaps in the ASGM sector and gold trade. Using satellite imagery and predictive modelling, researchers tracked the rapid expansion of mining activity and predicted the future movement of alluvial ASGM activities.
Key Findings:
- Methodological innovation: Remote sensing technologies were used to assess the spread, intensity,
and impact of mining activities. - Foreign involvement: The injection of investment and technology—often by foreign nationals,
particularly Chinese and Burkinabé—is significantly shaping unlicensed mining operations, gold supply chains, and financial flows. - Cyanide processing: The growing use of cyanide—introduced by foreign nationals from neighbouring West African countries—is reshaping processing activities and regional financial and gold flows.
- Money laundering: Casinos in Ghanaian mining areas present a high risk for money laundering.
- Sex trafficking: There is a worrying rise in the sexual exploitation of women in mining communities,
with patterns consistent with trafficking. - Power dynamics: The future of Ghana’s gold sector is closely linked to evolving power dynamics and
competition for control and profits from the sector.
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- Complex networks: Exposing secretive networks of actors, activities, and supply chains is necessary
to address challenges posed by illicit actors and markets that adapt rapidly to regulatory and market
changes. - Response strategy: Addressing criminality in the sector requires multifaceted, innovative, and adaptive approaches that build on existing efforts.
Read Part 1 now: https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/mapping-ghanas-expanding-gold-sector/
Part 2 (forthcoming) traces gold flows and how money moves, revealing the global reach of illicit flows.
About the Global Initiative:
The Global Initiative is an independent civil-society organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland,
with a globally dispersed Secretariat and a high-level advisory board. Its network members include
prominent law enforcement, governance, and development practitioners dedicated to seeking new and
innovative strategies and responses to organized crime.
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