By: Dr. Paul Appiah-Konadu and Cindy Odame
Ghana’s renewed fight against illegal small-scale mining, popularly known as ‘galamsey’, has produced real action. Security operations in the last decade have become more coordinated, irregular mining licenses have been revoked, protection for forest reserves has been restored, river patrols have expanded, and degraded land is being reclaimed in some mining communities. That progress deserves recognition. But it should not be mistaken for victory.
For families living near polluted rivers and abandoned pits, success is not the number of excavators seized/burnt or makeshift mining platforms destroyed. It is whether clean water flows reliably, farms remain productive, food is safe, damaged land is restored, and the people financing illegal mining are successfully prosecuted.
The scale of the crisis
The ruling government inherited an environmental emergency when it took power in January 2025. In February 2025, the Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Mr. Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, told Parliament that illegal mining had affected 44 of Ghana’s 288 forest reserves, with nine reportedly taken over by armed miners. Turbidity in some major rivers in the country was reported at 5,000 to 12,000 nephelometric turbidity units, far above the stated treatment threshold of 500.[Parliament of Ghana]
Turbidity measures cloudiness, not the presence of mercury or arsenic. Yet at such high levels, it raises treatment costs, increases sludge, damages equipment, and can force water systems to reduce or halt production. Several Ghanaian water-treatment facilities have faced serious operational disruption from polluted raw-water sources. While some water plants have reduced production because of rising treatment costs, others have issued shutdown warnings. The table below distinguishes confirmed treatment-plant shutdowns from reported operational difficulties and facilities facing an imminent risk of closure.
| Facility | Location/source | Reported situation |
| Bonsa Water Treatment Plant/Headworks | Tarkwa-Nsuaem, Western Region; River Bonsa | Ghana Water Limited shut the facility in January 2025 because pollution and siltation associated with illegal mining made abstraction and treatment impossible. The facility ordinarily supplied about 75% of Tarkwa-Nsuaem’s potable water. |
| Bonsa Water Treatment Plant | Tarkwa-Nsuaem, Western Region | In November 2025, Ghana Water Limited reported another shutdown linked to severe siltation. After dredging, the plant reportedly operated for only about three weeks before silt again obstructed the intake, leaving it unable to treat water. |
| Kyebi/Kibi Headworks | Eastern Region; River Birim | Reports indicate that the facility suspended operations because extreme turbidity and pollution made treatment difficult or impossible. However, the readily available reports are less authoritative and detailed than the documented Bonsa case. |
| Abesim Water Treatment Plant | Sunyani area; Tano River | Ghana Water Limited reportedly warned that continuing illegal-mining pollution could force a shutdown. This was a shutdown threat, not a completed closure. |
| Odaso Water Treatment Plant | Ashanti Region; River Oda | Officials of the Ghana Water Company have repeatedly warned that worsening raw-water pollution threatens the plant’s operation. The available evidence supports describing this as a plant at risk of shutdown or experiencing treatment difficulty, rather than a confirmed closure. |
Source: Authors’ Compilation, 2026 from Citi Newsroom, Modern Ghana, and Pulse Ghana
The consequences of illegal mining in Ghana are no longer hypothetical. In January 2025, Ghana Water Company Ltd. shut down the Bonsa Water Treatment Plant, which supplied about 75 percent of potable water to Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality, after severe pollution of the River Bonsa made abstraction and treatment impossible. Later reports indicated that the plant again stopped treating water after dredging rapidly silted its intake, due to galamsey-induced siltation. Other facilities, including the Kyebi, Abesim and Odaso plants, have reportedly suspended operations, reduced production, or faced shutdown warnings as pollution has increased in recent years.
The health concerns of galamsey and the associated water crisis are evident. A 2025 assessment by Pure Earth Ghana and the Environmental Protection Authority tested soil, water, air, crops and fish at 11 sites in six mining regions. It found serious site-specific contamination involving mercury, arsenic, lead and cadmium. The results cannot be generalized to every mining community, but they confirm that the danger is not limited to visibly brown rivers. Pollution can travel through the air, soil, water and food chain.[Pure Earth Ghana]
Signs of genuine progress
The creation of the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat, or NAIMOS, in June 2025 brought the military, police, immigration and intelligence services into a more unified structure. By March 2026, NAIMOS reported 122 operations, 237 arrests, 94 excavators seized or immobilized and 2,647 floating mining platforms destroyed. A later half-year update reported 200 operations across 53 districts between January and June 2026. Because the reporting periods overlap, the figures should not be added together. Even so, they show stronger reach and persistence than occasional raids.
The ruling government has deployed more than 2,000 Blue Water Guards to strengthen local river surveillance. The government has also commissioned forest-protection camps and revoked hundreds of small-scale licenses reportedly obtained through irregular means. The reversal of the legal instrument that permitted mining in forest reserves is particularly important. Enforcement cannot be credible when the legal framework itself leaves protected forests exposed.
Restoration has also begun. Reclaimed land has been handed back to communities at Twifo Atti Morkwa, and hundreds of hectares have been restored at Manso Nyankomanse. Meanwhile, an agreement worth GH¢8.4 million is intended to rehabilitate the Bonsa, Daboase and Sekyere Heman water-supply systems, which have struggled with high turbidity and related environmental pressures.
These interventions are meaningful. They demonstrate that the state is building capacity to disrupt illegal mining and repair some of the damage.
The gap between activity and impact
The central weakness is that Ghana’s public scorecard still measures government activity more clearly than environmental recovery. Citizens are regularly told how many raids were conducted, how many people were arrested, and how much equipment was seized. They receive far less consistent information about whether river pollution has fallen month after month, whether treatment costs have declined, whether toxic exposure has reduced, or whether arrested suspects were convicted.
An excavator seizure is an important disruption, but it is not deterrence. If financiers can replace machinery, if operators receive warnings before task forces arrive, or if miners return after security teams leave, the activity has merely been displaced. Government reports themselves acknowledge reoccupation and intelligence leaks in some areas.
The same caution applies to reports of clearer water in selected districts. These observations are encouraging, but Ghana still needs a publicly accessible, district-by-district record of turbidity, suspended solids, mercury, arsenic, treatment-plant output and treatment cost. A river that looks better for a week after a raid is not necessarily a recovered river.
Communities continue to pay the highest price.
Illegal mining shifts enormous costs onto ordinary people in the local communities whose livelihoods are already challenged. Ghana Water Limited has linked galamsey to higher chemical use, damaged equipment and rising treatment costs. Those costs eventually reach households through unreliable supply, taxes or tariffs. Public funds that could extend water access must instead repair damaged systems.
Farmers also lose twice: first when productive land is converted into mining pits, and again when the land left behind is unsafe or too degraded for cultivation. In Tano North, an official operation in January 2026 found land residents described as former rice and maize farms overtaken by illegal mining. The miners and excavators had reportedly left before the task force arrived, leaving damaged land and pumping equipment behind.
For many mining communities, however, enforcement alone cannot solve the problem. Gold offers immediate income where stable employment and productive farming opportunities are limited. Any alternative-livelihood program that pays too little, arrives late, or ignores local skills will struggle to compete. Legal cooperative mining, cleaner processing technology, access to finance, skills training and reliable markets must therefore become credible economic options, not temporary projects.
Follow the gold – and the money.
Ghana cannot raid its way out of galamsey while illegally produced gold still enters the formal market, including gold procured by the Gold Board. The government’s move toward centralized buying, cooperative mining, and mine-level traceability is therefore promising. But traceability must verify the exact source of gold: the mine location, license, environmental permit, beneficial owner, and compliance with water-body and forest-buffer rules.
Formal export growth facilitated by Gold Board is not automatically proof of responsible production. Unless every purchase is linked to a verified and compliant mine, illegal gold can be cleaned on paper and boost the country’s gold reserves, while rivers and farms remain dirty in practice.
A better national scoreboard
The next phase of the fight should be judged against five outcomes.
- First, recovered rivers. Publish monthly water-quality results for priority river basins and disclose treatment-plant output, chemical costs and downtime.
- Second, completed justice. Track cases from arrest to charge, judgment, and asset forfeiture, clearly identifying financiers, equipment owners, gold buyers, and complicit officials as categories.
- Third, clean gold. Make mine-level environmental traceability a condition for official purchase and subject the system to independent audit.
- Fourth, restored livelihoods. Test reclaimed land before returning it to farming, protect agricultural and riparian zones, and provide viable legal work for miners, farmers, women and young people.
- Fifth, healthier communities. Expand safe-water provision, food testing and targeted health monitoring in communities where heavy-metal exposure is suspected.
Progress, but not yet a turnaround
Ghana’s anti-galamsey campaign is no longer merely a collection of slogans. The enforcement machinery is stronger, important legal errors are being corrected, some licenses have been withdrawn, and selected land and water systems are receiving attention.
Yet the country remains caught between activity and impact. The crisis is too deep, the profits too attractive and the protection networks too resilient for raid statistics alone to prove success.
The fairest conclusion is neither that the fight has failed nor that it has been won. Ghana has become better at disrupting illegal mining. It must now prove that disruption can become deterrence, restoration, and lasting community recovery.
When families can trust their water, farmers can keep productive land, exposed communities receive protection, reclaimed sites remain restored, and powerful offenders cannot simply return with new machinery, Ghana will be able to say the tide has truly turned. Until then, progress is real – but victory remains unproven.
AUTHOR NOTE
This article is based on Ghanaian official records, regulator reports, environmental assessments, and peer-reviewed research published in 2025-2026. Hyperlinks are embedded in selected source references for editorial verification.
Dr. Paul Appiah-Konadu is a Lecturer at Academic City University and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Liberty and Economic Education (ILEE Policy Institute). Cindy Odame is the President of the Emerging Young Corporate Leaders Fellowship.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect ILEE’s official position.
