Ghana is doubling down on its golden heritage—and it’s not just a nostalgic nod to its colonial-era moniker, the Gold Coast. The country is setting its sights on a bold financial milestone: $12 billion in annual revenue from small-scale gold mining alone.
That figure, shared by Sammy Gyamfi, CEO of the newly established Ghana Gold Board, reflects the country’s growing confidence in its artisanal mining sector—a sector that’s been booming in tandem with soaring global gold prices.
“In January, we were purchasing about 1.5 tons of gold a week,” Gyamfi explained during a briefing in Accra. “Now, our aim is to double that—to move above 3 tons a week.” If successful, this scale-up could catapult Ghana’s small-scale gold sector into one of the most significant foreign exchange earners in the country’s history.
Ghana has long leaned on gold as a backbone of its economy. It overtook South Africa in 2019 as the continent’s top gold producer, and in 2023, gold exports surged by more than 50%, reaching $11.6 billion. Roughly one-third of that came from small-scale and artisanal miners.
But there’s a catch: while the law legitimizes small-scale mining, more than 85% of these operations remain informal or unregulated, according to recent studies. That has led to lost revenue, illegal trade, and smuggling—issues the government is now racing to fix.
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The solution? A centralized regulatory approach.
The Ghana Gold Board was set up not only to monitor the sector but to buy directly from artisanal miners, offering fair prices and reducing the lure of the black market. By bringing these miners into the formal economy, the Board hopes to boost Ghana’s foreign currency reserves, a crucial move for a country still grappling with the aftershocks of a 2022 debt default.
Gold prices have hit near-record highs, hovering close to $3,300 an ounce, offering Ghana a rare window of opportunity. With traditional access to global capital markets restricted, leveraging the country’s most valuable export could help stabilize its economy and attract new investment.
Gyamfi emphasized that the strategy isn’t just about profit—it’s about sustainability, transparency, and economic sovereignty. “This isn’t just a mining policy,” he said. “It’s a national development strategy.”
If Ghana can formalize more of its small-scale operations and hit its 3-tons-a-week goal, the $12 billion benchmark could move from projection to reality. And in doing so, the country would once again reaffirm that its gold isn’t just in the ground—it’s in its future.
