Illegal Chinese Gold Mining Leaves an Open Wound in Ghana

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Chinese national En “Aisha” Huang is well known in Ghana as the “Galamsey Queen,” a nickname bestowed by the local media to describe her status as a kingpin of illegal gold mining operations.

Her arrest and recent sentencing are emblematic of Ghana’s serious, ongoing problem with Chinese involvement in illegal artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASM).

A Ghanaian court on December 4 sentenced Huang to 4½ years in prison and levied a $4,000 fine for running an illegal mining operation. Authorities told reporters that she will be deported after serving the sentence.

“She’s someone that has gotten her name in the media a lot,” Deputy Attorney General and Minister of Justice Alfred Tuah-Yeboah told reporters outside the courthouse on December 4. “Today she’s come to the end of the road. It should be a lesson to the others that you may be engaged in illegal mining, but when the time comes, the law will deal with you.”

Ghana is the largest producer of gold on the continent and the sixth-largest in the world, reporting an output of 129 metric tons in 2021.

About 30% of its production comes from ASM, known by the Ghanaian phrase galamsey, which roughly means “gather them and sell.”

Ghana legalized the ASM sector in 1989 but explicitly forbade the involvement of foreigners. Between 2008 and 2013, however, an estimated 50,000 Chinese nationals migrated to the West African nation.

Ghanaian miners used to extract gold deposits from shallow depths using basic tools and traditional techniques that required intense labor. Today, galamseyers churn up soil from riverbeds and farms using excavators and bulldozers that often are supplied by Chinese investors.

James Boafo, a lecturer at Zambia’s Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and his colleagues documented the shift in a 2019 report published in the journal Sustainability.

“Chinese miners imported more sophisticated machinery such as diggers, water pumps and bulldozers, which gradually replaced the crude methods and tools used by Ghanaian miners,” the report stated.

“The Chinese miners outcompete existing self-employed Ghanaian artisanal miners, resulting in loss of livelihoods of the latter, forcing many local miners to seek employment under their Chinese counterparts.”

Experts warn that the environmental impact of galamsey operations represents a dire threat to Ghana’s drinking water and its thriving cocoa industry.

Illegal ASM operations use rivers to sift gold dust and nuggets from the sediment, which leaves trails of brown, muddy water for thousands of kilometers. Then the miners use mercury, lead and other harmful substances to retrieve the gold from the water.

Chinese-led illegal mining operations have been accused of polluting bodies of water, destroying large swaths of forest, and encroaching on large-scale legal mining concessions.

Carl Kojo Fiati, director of natural resources at Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency, has warned that the country might need to import water by 2030 because its rivers will be too polluted by the runoff of galamsey operations.

“When it comes to galamsey, it looks like there is no national will to deal with it,” he told Citi FM radio. “We appear to value the gold more than the water we drink and the land on which we farm and our forest. We have to make people realize that galamsey is illegal and punishable. The way to do it is to arrest, prosecute and, if possible, jail those who do galamsey. The effect of galamsey on the population and the future of this country is far reaching. We cannot compromise with it.”

Huang’s case has been in Ghanaian headlines since her first arrest in May 2017. Instead of prosecuting, Ghanaian authorities deported her in December 2018. She returned in 2022, was arrested in September 2022, and detained again on the original charges.

In her trial this year, several local farmers testified that Huang negotiated with them to use their land for illegal mining.

“Because of the indignity with which the accused person operated, the sentence should reflect the impact of her actions on the people of Ghana, the communities that she had permanently impaired and the livelihoods that she took away,” Director of Public Prosecutions Yvonne Atakora Obuobisa said in court.

Tuah-Yeboah said the high-profile nature of Huang’s case will bring needed attention to the galamsey problem, and he called upon Ghanaians to help root out illegal mining.

“It’s a fight that we have not won,” he said. “It’s a fight that is a continuous one, and we all need to take part in the fight.”