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Prof. Ernest Kofi Amankwa Afrifa of the Department of Environmental Science, University of Cape Coast, has posited that minimising galamsey is very achievable, but eradicating it from Ghana is highly impossible.
He emphasized that galamsey is rooted in the cultural psyche of the people engaging in it, hence, eradicating it is virtually impossible, but bringing it to its barest minimum is highly achievable.
Prof. Afrifa made these remarks in a telephone interview on GBC Radio Central’s Morning Show on Wednesday, 29th January 2025. He was assessing the minister-designate for Lands and Natural Resources’ appearance at the vetting committee of Parliament.
He remarked that the minister exhibited a high level of knowledge, exemplifying someone who was very well-prepared, and that was commendable.
With regards to the galamsey issue and whether the Minister-designate was capable of solving the menace, the environment scholar underscored, judging from the answers provided at the vetting that , “I think he’s capable of helping us find solutions to the problem. I would encourage the president to give him the maximum support to be successful”.
In proffering some solutions to the galamsey menace, he alluded to the fact that galamsey isn’t the problem, but irresponsible mining is. To solve this, he outlined the following solutions.
Firstly, Prof. Afrifa averred that to be successful in the galamsey fight, we need to stop the over-politicization of the issue. “To be successful with the fight, we need to treat galamsey as a non-political matter,” he suggested.
Further, he was of the opinion that members of the previous government were blamed for being neck-deep in galamsey. “Now, the table has turned, and what is the current situation?” he quizzed, adding that he had gathered some information suggesting some party executives of the current government are hurriedly taking over the galamsey business.
“Until we take out the politicization, it would be very difficult to make headway,” he stressed.
Secondly, Prof. Afrifa shared that educating the local inhabitants to appreciate the negative effects of galamsey would help our cause. “Most of them seem not to understand the effects of galamsey. Helping them to appreciate the negative consequences of their actions, with the aid of vivid graphic imagery, could help them move away from some long-held views on mining,” stated Prof. Afrifa.
Thirdly, he was of the view that solving the galamsey menace would require empowering traditional leaders, citing Asantehene’s example where some chiefs who were involved in galamsey were destooled as a good example to help curb the situation.
When the above have been implemented, then military deployment becomes the next step to weed out recalcitrant miners from our forest and river bodies. This is to ensure total control to safeguard our water bodies and forest cover.
In his concluding remarks, he suggested that the country needs to define the problem well before tackling it – is it the galamsey (involving pickaxe and shovel) we know, which wasn’t harmful, or is it small-scale mining or irresponsible mining? Our ability to define the problem well is part of finding lasting solutions to it.
As it stands, there is confusion about what galamsey really is, and we need to unravel what we actually mean. Again, educating the people to understand the negative consequences of their actions on future generations, especially the wanton destruction of our forest cover, would help.
“We should manage our short to medium term expectations on the fight against the menace as it cannot be solved fully within the short or medium term. We can only deploy measures to slow it down; it would take some time to achieve the needed results,” he ended.
