95% gold recovery key to galamsey fight — Hosi

Finance and economic policy analyst Senyo Hosi has proposed a fundamental restructuring of Ghana’s artisanal and small-scale mining sector, arguing that the fight against galamsey can be won by making responsible mining more profitable than illegal operations.

Mr. Hosi, who has management experience across varying industries, including downstream petroleum and public policy management, said the key is to increase gold recovery from the estimated 30% achieved by many galamsey operators to as much as 95% through technology, better geological information and professional mining practices.

He said the additional gold recovered would create the economic value needed to finance responsible mining, allowing miners to earn more while reducing the amount of ore processed and land disturbed.

According to him, the strategy would require government to facilitate access to modern equipment, technical expertise, geological data, improved processing systems and affordable financing, with miners repaying the investment from the additional income generated.

Recover more gold, disturb less land

Mr. Hosi said galamsey operators had told him that their conventional methods recover about 30% of available gold, while the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines has estimated recovery from galamsey operations at about 40%.

He said experts he had interviewed believed that better geological data, mercury-free processing, closed-water systems and professional mine planning could potentially increase recovery to about 95%, comparable to the levels achieved by major mining operations.

The significance, he said, was that miners could obtain substantially more gold without continually expanding their operations into new areas.

Improved geological information would help identify and assess deposits before excavation, while professional mine planning could improve the efficiency and safety of extraction.

At the processing stage, mercury-free technology and closed-water systems could improve recovery while reducing contamination and the amount of waste discharged into the environment.

Mr. Hosi said the combination could make responsible mining commercially attractive because higher recovery would increase revenue while more efficient operations would reduce waste and environmental damage.

Govt must enable the transition

The major obstacle, he said, is the upfront cost of the transition.

“Galamseyers will not invest in these, but government can and must, either on its own or through its facilitation,” he said.

He argued that government could provide the equipment and infrastructure directly or create financing arrangements through which miners could access them.

The financing model, he said, should be structured so that a transparent share of the additional value generated from improved gold recovery goes towards paying for equipment, processing infrastructure, reclamation, monitoring and traceability.

That would create a cycle in which better technology increases recovery, increased recovery raises miners’ incomes, and part of the additional income finances continued compliance and environmental management.

“If government wants the gold, it must fix the system that produces it,” Mr. Hosi said.

Make compliance the profitable choice

Mr. Hosi said the broader policy objective should be to change the incentives facing small-scale miners.

He argued that previous regularisation efforts had not adequately addressed the economics of responsible mining because compliance could cost more without providing a corresponding financial benefit.

“The way forward is therefore to make compliance more profitable than illegality and noncompliance consequential,” he said.

Under his proposed arrangement, government would help miners formalise and modernise their operations, while miners would be required to meet clear environmental and safety standards, improve recovery and repay investments from the additional income generated.

He said access to public support should therefore be tied to measurable compliance, creating a direct economic reason for miners to remain within the formal system.

Why enforcement alone is failing

Mr. Hosi said the current strategy had placed too much emphasis on raids, seizures and arrests without sufficiently changing the economic conditions that sustain galamsey.

He cited recent developments in Osino, where he said miners reportedly returned and resumed operations days after the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS) had driven them from an illegal site.

“If every raid merely resets the clock, then what exactly are we changing and what are we winning?” he asked.

He said enforcement remained necessary, but could not by itself defeat an activity that remained economically rewarding and deeply embedded in communities.

He said the problem was therefore not simply a question of stronger enforcement but of creating an alternative that could compete with the income generated by illegal mining.

Mining and community livelihoods

Mr. Hosi said the economic attraction of galamsey had to be understood before policymakers could expect communities to reject it.

He said galamsey operators paid some Junior High School dropouts between GH¢2,000 and GH¢10,000 a week, which he noted could exceed the earnings of many formally employed graduates.

He cited Germany’s Ambassador to Ghana, Frederik Landshöft, who recently highlighted the estimated one million people working in artisanal and small-scale mining and stressed the need to recognise the young people, families and communities whose livelihoods are tied to the sector.

Mr. Hosi said that economic dependence explained why some communities continued to tolerate or protect illegal miners despite the environmental and safety consequences.

“Where formal jobs are scarce, NAIMOS raids cannot outcompete Galamsey earnings,” he said.

He argued that communities would be more likely to support responsible mining if the formal sector could provide comparable or better economic returns.

Mining tragedies expose the dilemma

Mr. Hosi also raised concerns about the human cost of unsafe mining.

He said 22 people had drowned in abandoned pits in the Central Region alone within seven months, while other incidents had involved collapsing pits and children dying in mining craters.

Yet, he questioned why such tragedies did not consistently trigger sustained community resistance.

“Are those of us outside crying more than the bereaved, or have we failed to understand what keeps the bereaved silent?” he asked.

He said the silence should not necessarily be interpreted as approval of galamsey.

“The silence is not consent. It is evidence of how tightly galamsey is bound to people’s survival in these communities,” he said.

He cited Jema as an example of a community that had resisted galamsey but said such cases remained exceptions.

Measure environmental results

Mr. Hosi said the effectiveness of the fight against galamsey should be judged by outcomes rather than the volume of enforcement activity.

He questioned the usefulness of counting excavators seized and miners arrested without determining whether rivers had become cleaner, degraded land had been restored or lawful mining had become safer and more profitable.

“The failure of our current strategy is not due to an absence of action; it is the result of substituting action for results,” he said.

He proposed that government establish agreed baselines for every mining district and publish independently verified scorecards measuring water quality, land reclamation, lawful gold production, mining safety, livelihoods and the profitability of responsible small-scale mining.

Such reporting, he said, would make it possible to determine whether interventions were producing lasting change rather than temporarily disrupting mining activity.

Gold’s wider economic importance

Mr. Hosi said the difficulty of abruptly shutting down small-scale mining also had a broader economic dimension.

He said gold accounted for 67.4% of Ghana’s export receipts in 2025 and warned that a sudden disruption to production could reduce foreign-exchange inflows, affect the cedi and disrupt economic activity in mining communities.

He said the political and economic costs of immediate shutdowns were more visible than the longer-term benefits of environmental recovery.

That, he argued, helped explain why governments had repeatedly relied on periodic enforcement operations rather than pursuing a deeper restructuring of the sector.

The solution, in his view, is not to choose between the economy and the environment but to redesign small-scale mining so that economic incentives support environmental responsibility.

Galamsey fight needs a new definition of success

Mr. Hosi said his own experience campaigning against galamsey had reinforced the need for a more practical and flexible policy approach.

“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,” he said.

He said the campaign had cost him friends, earned him enemies and hurt his businesses, but had not weakened his conviction that the problem could be solved.

Drawing on lessons from his policy lecturers, particularly Prof. Dordunoo, he said successful policy must be practical and adaptable.

“When a method repeatedly fails, persistence is not virtue; it is a refusal to learn,” he said.

For Mr. Hosi, success should therefore be defined by cleaner rivers, reclaimed land, traceable lawful production, protected and recovered forest reserves and improved food quality.

He said those outcomes must be measured against agreed baselines and reported publicly and independently.

Beyond gold

Mr. Hosi said transforming small-scale mining should form part of a wider economic strategy rather than deepen Ghana’s dependence on gold.

He called for greater development of manufacturing, agriculture and agro-processing, tourism, digital services, traditional exports, remittances and other internationally competitive services.

Gold, he said, could provide important foreign exchange but could not by itself diversify the productive base of the economy.

The broader objective should be to build an economy capable of generating foreign exchange from multiple sources while creating enough formal employment to reduce communities’ dependence on environmentally destructive mining.

Transform, don’t simply suppress

Mr. Hosi said Ghana could win the fight against galamsey if it changed the economic calculation confronting small-scale miners.

His proposed model rests on a straightforward exchange: government facilitates access to technology, geological information, finance, training and responsible processing; miners comply with environmental and safety requirements and repay investments from increased gold recovery.

The aim, he said, is to create a sector in which responsible mining is safer, more productive and more profitable than illegal mining.

“We can win the fight against galamsey but only by changing how we fight, measuring outcomes and refusing to mistake activity for progress,” Mr. Hosi said.