Stirring up the Mining Wok

It has been a while since I have made an entry here but the truth is, I thought I had covered mostly everything out there about artisanal mining. I thought I had seen it all in Ghanaian galamsey communities: child labour, mercury pollution, land degradation, crime. That is, of course, until I stumbled across something rather peculiar quite recently: a Chinese galamsey miner – no, wait ten, eleven…100 Chinese galamsey miners, working illegally in the community of Japa in the Western Region.

This is something that has been talked about quite extensively in the Ghana press for much of the past year. All over the country, Chinese, covered in dirt and armed to the teeth, can now be found digging for gold. Often, they are working with excavators and other heavy equipment, right in front of policemen and local government officers. They have even brought to a standstill Jeffery Sach’s Millennium Village in Bonsaaso, long portrayed by his much-beloved Earth Institute as an idyllic farming community, overtaking people’s plots and almost overnight establishing massive small-scale mining enclaves. Though the village was likely destined for failure anyway because of a flawed design and unrealistic aims and objectives (pushing people in a locality in the heart of a wider area built on nearly 300 years of gold mining into exclusively farming), the fact that the Chinese have had no qualms about overtaking an UN-funded project is indeed grounds for concern. After all, they are mining illegally.

Perhaps even more worrying than the lack of action being taken by the Ghanaian Government to address the growing Chinese presence in the country’s galamsey economy is the shortage of answers concerning how these foreigners have managed to set up shop in this context altogether. The basic questions we all have on our minds seem to be the least answerable at this stage: namely, how did they get here? and why are they flourishing? There are, of course, several rumours about, none of which is verifiable. The most believable is that Chinese were initially registering as mine service companies and, once securing the requisite documents, ‘entered the wild’ so to speak, picking up shovels and pickaxes en route to becoming the latest additions to the galamsey economy. This, however, does not explain why there continues to be a steady influx of Chinese into the country’s mining communities because Ghana has since cracked down on this, prohibiting Chinese from registering as service companies. It is now, allegedly because of this loophole, even reviewing its procurement law.

A colleague of mine who rarely does any meaningful research on the ground and, rather unjustifiably, seems to have something negative to say about everyone who has, claims that it is the politicians who are behind everything. It is probably the only logical thing he has said in his lifetime. He went on to state that the growing Chinese presence in the sector is ‘stirring up the mining wok’ (which I presumed at the time, given the laughs that followed, was some poor attempt at village level humour, using Chinese cooking and specifically a reference to what he claims is ‘the only good service they provide in Ghana’ – cooking food – as some kind of bizarre metaphor to underscore how the dynamics have changed in the mining sector as a result of their growing presence). But on this issue, my colleague, who knows next-to-nothing about small-scale mining in Ghana, seems to be spot on. How does a daily flight, direct from Abu Dhabi, ¾ filled with Chinese citizens connecting from Beijing or Shanghai, not raise any suspicion amongst policymakers? Possibly because they, and perhaps some corrupt officials in immigration, are facilitating their entry into Ghana.

This leads to a second question: how have the Chinese been able to stay for such lengthy periods in Ghana? There are obviously parties which are housing and supporting the Chinese in the rural areas where they are now working. All signs point to the country’s traditional leaders and certainly, on more than one occasion, contingents of Chinese miners have been seen sleeping and being fed lavishly in a paramount chief’s palace for extended periods. Ghana’s chieftaincy institution, which had long been a shell of its former corrupt and powerful self, stripped of lands by Nkrumah and its local authority heavily undermined by the decentralization project and District Assemblies implemented by Jerry Rawlings, have seen its power restore rapidly in an era of mining sector reform. Chiefs have emerged as crucial community liaisons, often brokering mining rights with parties of all shapes and sizes, the Chinese included. Their power in rural areas remains highly uncontested, which has likely led to situations where Chinese miners, in exchange for a share of output, are provided maximum protection by chiefs.

The growing presence of illicit Chinese mining activity is reducing opportunities for Ghanaian miners and causing significant community-level friction in farming areas. But why is nothing being done about this? There are whispers that a US$2.4 billion dollar development loan awarded by China to Ghana is forcing the government to turn a blind eye – that too many arrests of illegal Chinese operators could affect this lending and jeopardize donor relations between the countries in the future. This could explain why, quite regularly, scores of Chinese can be seen shopping at Shoprite, in the Accra Mall, shamelessly wearing nametags belonging to ‘Hansol Mining’, a company which is allegedly engaged in significant illegal activity in districts such as Amansie West.

The number of illegal Chinese-backed mining activities is increasingly rapidly in Ghana. But the next few months, a time when swift and immediate action will be needed to tackle this problem, will be a protracted period of inaction. Not wanting to lose any of what little popularity it has left in Ghana, the incumbent NDC Government, desperate to hold on to votes, will not risk upsetting any local-level community dynamics.

Who knows what Ghana’s galamsey economy will look like when – dare I say – Nana Akufo Ado is sworn in as the country’s next president in December.

Living through a Paradox

The lights have just gone off and I am now in battery mode on my computer. It is 7:30 at night, and the sounds of generators starting and humming now fill the night. I am in Ghana, which means the lights may or may not go on again tonight.
I find myself living through a paradox. Has Ghana not recently begun drilling for oil, one of Earth’s most prized energy sources? It produces 80,000 barrels of crude a day, pale in comparison to Nigeria’s 2.5 million barrels of daily output but certainly enough to keep the lights on in some parts of the country. Where is all of the oil going?

This is a problem which plagues all of sub-Saharan Africa, and an issue which most of the world – except the few benefitting from oil production in the region – is now very familiar with. Nigeria is the biggest basket case: despite producing 2.5 million barrels of oil per day, it is a net importer of fuel. Angola, with steel-fisted Dos Santos at the helm, is another puzzling case. How did the world sit back and ‘allow’ Luanda morph into an enclave of multimillion dollar housing complexes, US$300 meals, champagne and hummers? The two million barrels of crude produced in Angola each day further enriches Dos Santos and his cronies. Then we have the ‘lesser’ producers, such as Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo Brazzaville, each with its own corrupt leaders and greedy customers. In total, there is an average of 10 billion barrels of oil produced in Africa. But what benefits have come about from this production?

Going back to Ghana, the Ghana Oil Fund has, according to the World Bank, accumulated savings in the range of US$69.2 million. I do not dare estimate what the value of the oil extracted was that yielded this sum but regardless: there is little disputing that this is a substantial sum of money. So why not improve your capacity to generate electricity, to construct facilities capable of turning your rich, untapped reserves of oil into the electricity needed to transform your country into the developed nation your delusional Vision 2020 alleges you will become by the year 2020.

Make no mistake. The resource curse is alive and well in Ghana today.

Briefing: Fair Trade for Whom?

It appears that as an idea, Fair Trade mining has finally captured the consumers’ conscience. Through extensive lobbying, many of the organizations that make up the umbrella Fair Trade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) have successfully popularized this idea, painting the picture that the acquisition of so-called Fair Trade minerals is helping to lift some of the world’s poorest people out of poverty. But further analysis reveals an entirely different story.

Apart from gold mining – a discussion which I will leave for another day – perhaps the most intriguing cases in this context is coloured gemstones. How can Fair Trade schemes be launched for these high-value commodities, which only occur in a handful of countries? There are now a host of international players involved in the production, distribution and sale of coloured gemstones. At first glance, it would appear that implementing a superimposed system of Fair Trade in such instances would be an impossible feat. Closer investigation underscores just how difficult this can be.

Take, for example, the case of Nyala ruby, a much-coveted precious stone sourced from Malawi which the Washington State-based distributor Columbia Gemhouse has curiously – and potentially, prematurely – has labelled a ‘Fair Trade Gemstone’. This classification seems to have arisen on the basis of the organization knowing where the stones are being sourced from, and that production is taking place under certain conditions. But the message is very different on the ground. If we were to follow the model in place for agricultural commodities, it would mean that Columbia Gemhouse is partnering with impoverished small-scale gemstone operators, which is not the case. It is rather partnering with a series of ‘local’ businessmen (of Indian descent) who run a large-scale operation. During interviews, these men shared their own ideas about Fair Trade that were completely different from those of Columbia Gemhouse and small-scale miners.

The reality is that each of the different parties involved has a very different perception of what Fair Trade is. Research is ongoing to unpack each of these viewpoints further but in the meantime, the customer should not be told they are purchasing a commodity which could be the furthest thing from Fair Trade.