Ghana is has overtaken South African as the continents leading producer of gold and has been contributing significantly to world gold production for centuries. The country is endowed with huge gold deposits that is buried under the earth’s crust and our water bodies. Apart from 2004, the mining sector has become the highest gross foreign exchange earner from 1991 to date (Minerals commission, 2015).
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The huge potentials of our mining sector cannot be over emphasize yet its contribution to human development and overall impact on the economy has been, if not minimal, then closer to stagnant.
Natural resources play an integral role in most economies around and thus could be harness or leverage upon for sustainable growth.
The natural resource wealth should serve as a catalyst for economic, social and technological growth yet, this cannot be said to be the situation in Ghana. The contribution of resource wealth to the economic growth is still minimal comparing it to centuries of extracting this resources.
Despite the wealth these resource could generate for us as a country, we still go out cup-in- hand begging for aid and budget surpluses. We cannot undertake any monumental project without external support even though we are counted among the resource rich countries in the world. For example, ASM is a significant sub sector providing livelihood for millions of Ghanaians and has the potential to contribute to poverty reduction and stimulate economic growth yet its contribution to poverty eradication is minimal.
The staggering contradictions of how a country well-endowed in natural resources(gold) yet, cannot boast of any impactful or monumental project birthed from the harness of such resources beats imaginations. Most countries in the global North sees natural resource as a catalyst for development with its multiplier effects and linkages on the growth of other sectors of the economy. But the same cannot be said about Ghana and any Global South countries where the same resource has become nothing but a curse and catalyst for conflicts, social dislocations and grinding poverty and deindustrialization.
This of course, is part of a systemic problem bedeviling most resource rich countries particularly those in the global south of which Ghana is not an exception. These problems are part of a larger problem which scholars have termed as “the paradox of plenty”. Our resource, despite its worth has contributed little to the overall development of the country particularly, human development. Our recourses continue to serve as the raw material for industries in the Global North. This has led to deindustrialization and lack of diversification of our economies. The natural resource sector has become and enclave sector with little or no local participation thus, allowing for repatriation of wealth out of the country. Scholars termed this problem as the “Dutch disease”.
Despite our enormous resource wealth and potentials, we are entrapped in exporting raw commodities without any attempt to add value to it. Structural dependency on resource wealth has made it difficult for countries like Ghana to diversify its dividend from such resource to other sectors of the economy. Our natural resources sectors has no linkages be it forward or backward linkages thus, making it extreme difficult for the other sectors to thrive. For instance, our upstream or petrol chemical sector has no linkage with the salt industry that could serve as an input resource in production.
Likewise, there’s no linkages between the midstream sectors such as Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) or the downstream sectors that sell to consumers. All our oil and gold are sold as raw commodities to feed the industries of the Global North.
In conclusion, Artisanal has a long-long history that predates colonialism. The field has evolved from the use of rudimentary process by peasants to a more sophisticate use of machinery which involves actors like the elite class, politicians and expatriates who take advantage of the weak regulations and virtue of their connections in government to enrich themselves.
The economic reforms undertaken in the 1980s had a great implications on the mining sector particularly those whose livelihood depended in it for survival. The failure of proper regulation in the mining sector after the economic reforms in the 1980s led the unending way of galamsey. This menace is a clear manifestation of political corruption, institutional breakdown, and political impunity of the elite class.
The value of our minerals wealth does not translate to actual wealth because, we lack the managerial and technical skills in harnessing such resources. Global structural capitalist market has also made it difficult for countries like Ghana to industrialize since the survival of their industries depend on our export of raw commodities. Thus, the resource curse is a very complex situation with a long historical exploitation that cannot be said to be issues of mismanagement alone.
And so, countries like Ghana should focus on training technical skilled labour in these areas and prudently manage money accrued and diversify it into the other sector of the economy in other to narrowly escape the resource curse and the paradox of plenty.
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