The chief executive of the Gold Board, Sammy Gyamfi, has delivered a sweeping argument for rethinking how the world sources gold from artisanal and small-scale mines. His message was both a defence of a sector that now anchors Ghana’s economic recovery and a warning about the global risks posed by illegal mining and smuggled gold.
In a nearly hour-long address titled “Sourcing Gold from Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mines,” Mr. Gyamfi cast gold as far more than a commodity. In Ghana, he said, it is a cultural emblem, a political driver, and a livelihood for millions. “Gold is gold and looks like it will forever be gold,” he told the audience. “That metal which never loses its lustre, its relevance and its place in a civilised world.”
He reminded delegates that gold has shaped Ghana’s identity from the era when European traders named the place the Gold Coast. Even today, he said, gold remains at the heart of the country’s economic system — and increasingly, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is at the centre of that reality.
Mr. Gyamfi cited striking numbers. ASM operations accounted for 54 percent of Ghana’s current gold exports and contributed roughly $8 billion in foreign earnings this year. The sector, he argued, had helped fuel one of Ghana’s most significant economic rebounds in years. He pointed to the unexpected appreciation of the cedi against the US dollar, the first since redenomination in 2007, which, he noted, shaved more than 130 billion cedis off Ghana’s public debt.
He then turned to the human story: three million jobs tied to ASM, at a moment when youth unemployment hovers near 20 percent. Gold mining, he said, had become a path to survival, dignity and “economic relevance” for young people across rural Ghana.
But he was blunt about the environmental and security costs. “Illegal ASM operations destroy our rivers, our forest reserves and poison our food crops,” he said. “No gold is worth the lives and sustainable future of our people.”
Mr. Gyamfi used the Dubai stage to press a message that has long unsettled Ghana’s gold industry: that much of the gold leaving West Africa is smuggled, aided by foreign buyers who look the other way. He singled out situations in which the United Arab Emirates recorded higher gold imports from Ghana than Ghana itself reported.
“The reason is simple: smuggled gold,” he said.
He called for an international mechanism — “an Accra or Dubai Process,” as he put it — that would play a role similar to the Kimberley Process, which curbed the trade in conflict diamonds. Without such intervention, he warned, gold could increasingly finance money laundering, criminal organisations and political destabilisation.
Mr. Gyamfi defended the Mahama administration’s decision to create the Ghana Gold Board (known domestically as GoldBod), which now stands as the sole lawful buyer and exporter of ASM gold. Under Act 1104, the board grades, assays, weighs, values and exports gold produced in or brought into Ghana. Buyers and aggregators must sell only to the board.
“If you are not buying gold from a large mine, you must be buying only from the GoldBod,” he said. “If you fail to do so, you are a smuggler.”
He described a broad campaign to professionalise the sector: licensing reforms, tighter regulation of the supply chain, a shift to transparent pricing in cedis, and the deployment of enforcement teams to dismantle illegal export networks. Those measures, he said, had helped raise official gold exports by 150 percent.
More than 50 foreign nationals had been arrested for illegal gold trading in the past year alone.
Mr. Gyamfi also outlined a new technological overhaul he said would transform how ASM gold is tracked. Beginning next year, Ghana will introduce a blockchain-based traceability system that geolocates every licensed small-scale mining site and tracks each bar of gold from source to export.
“With a scan of a bar, the market will be able to trace the gold to the mine it came from,” he said.
He added that GoldBod would soon transition to fire assay — the global standard for purity testing — and would require ASM operators to use XRF assaying devices as a minimum.
The crux of Mr. Gyamfi’s message rested on a paradox: ASM creates more jobs than Ghana’s large-scale mines, but often at enormous ecological cost. He framed the solution in technological and regulatory terms, urging a future in which miners rely on mercury-free processing, comply with land reclamation rules and draw on geological data rather than “lottery mining” based on guesswork.
ASM recovery rates, he noted, are below 40 percent. With improved technology and training, Ghana hoped to push that to above 90 percent.
He announced partnerships with the Geological Survey Authority and private firms to map mineral deposits, and with financiers to supply small miners with tracked, geofenced equipment that cannot be used outside authorised concessions.
Mr. Gyamfi placed all of this within a broader national trajectory. Ghana’s fight against illegal mining, he said, had reached a point where political considerations no longer stood in the way. He cited the recent arrest of a sitting MP from the ruling party who attempted to obstruct an anti-galamsey operation.
“We must mine but mine responsibly,” he said.
Ending his speech, Mr. Gyamfi returned to the moral question that framed his opening remarks. ASM, he said, was not only an economic engine but an obligation — a chance to expand opportunity without destroying the inheritance of future generations.
“The land we live on is borrowed land from generations unborn,” he said. “May they look back with gratitude and say we forged a golden path that gave them a meaningful economic chance and yet kept their lands intact.”
The applause that followed was long and deliberate, a sign, perhaps, that in a region where gold has always been currency, the conversation about how it is sourced may finally be shifting.
