The Day Gold Lost Its Glitter

Posted: 29 March 2006

by Andres McKinley

An advocate returns to Africa, and finds mining is not helping the poorest in Ghana.

Joyce Oboako was born on the wrong side of town on Aug. 19, 2002. The crumbling one-room hut of mud and sticks that is her home is situated on the outskirts of the bustling, dusty mining community of Prestea in the heavily mined Wassa district of western Ghana. Less than 500 yards away is the open-pit gold mine of Bogoso Gold Limited, subsidiary of US-based company Gold Star Resources.

On Oct. 8, 2002, a mining blast sent her tumbling from her bed resulting in severe brain damage and paralysis in both of her legs. For her mother, Mercy Appiah, and her father, Alhassan Oboako, gold lost all its glitter on that tragic day.

I was in Prestea to visit mining sites with a team from Oxfam America’s West Africa program, so I could learn about mining, and apply the lessons they have learned to my work for Oxfam in Central America. I worked in West Africa as a Peace Corps teacher from 1969 to 1972, and have spent almost 30 years in Central America. Although I have become accustomed to poverty and oppression, I was still shocked by what I found in the mining communities of western Ghana.

Every village I visited had its story, but the central theme, as told by villagers, was always the same: Farmlands, collectively owned in accordance with tradition, have been ceded to transnational mining interests, sometimes through the bribery of town chiefs and corrupt government officials. Farmers complained that their homes and fields have been displaced or destroyed by mining activities. Others said their water sources have been contaminated, leading to a dramatic rise in illness related to exposure to dangerous chemicals and heavy metals. The destruction of agricultural lands has resulted in a growing dependency on mining at the community level, but few real jobs are available for unskilled local people.

Blasting and Pollution

Prestea has been a mining town since the 1930s, but it wasn´t until 1996 that open-pit mining replaced the traditional underground shafts. This new form of mining started to destroy traditional agricultural lands and livelihoods. Three fresh water springs, the community’s only natural water source, have been covered over by mining waste and contaminated by cyanide and acid drainage. The mining company has built water storage tanks, and trucks in daily rations of water from surrounding areas. But eventually the mine will close, when the minerals are all gone. And it is unclear where the town’s water supply will come from then.

Blasting close to the community threatens shops and schools, and local citizens believe that the unregulated use of cyanide and other chemicals has contributed to a high incidence of anemia, silicosis, skin rash, cancer, and premature death.

Growing concerns for the sustainability of the community drove more than 10,000 people to march in protest of open-pit mining in 2004. They sent petitions to the Ministry of Mines, the Environmental Protection Agency and members of Parliament asking that open-pit mining be halted, but there have been no responses to date.

Ghana’s Gold Rush

Transnational corporations, with names like Anglo Gold Ashanti, Newmont, Goldenstar Resources, and Ghanaian Australian Goldfields can take as much as 97 percent of their earnings from mining out of the country, leaving little for the government to redistribute back to the villages affected by the mines. This leaves farmers and villagers dealing with the pollution and public health problems related to mining, and enjoying none of the benefits.

On Feb. 2, 2006, the World Bank approved a $75 million loan to a subsidiary of Newmont Mining, the world’s No. 2 gold producer, for a mine the Bank says will be a model for the developing world. Officials at the Bank and Newmont say the mine will help generate revenue for Ghana and that people will be better off.

However environmental and development groups have warned of its dangers to land and water, and say it will displace more than 9,000 people from their fields and communities. Other critics say it will generate minimal resources for Ghana and will fall short of providing promised benefits in health and education.

And the World Bank seems to be ignoring some its own analysis indicating mining “produces only modest amounts of net foreign exchange for Ghana after accounting for all its outflows,” according to a 2003 report from its Operations Evaluation Department. The report’s conclusion: “A broader cost-benefit analysis of large-scale mining that factors in social and environmental costs and includes consultations with the affected communities, needs to be undertaken before granting future production licences."

In the meantime, a small girl named Joyce Oboako sits by herself on the dusty ground of Prestea, waiting for a friendly pair of outstretched arms to lift her up and distract her from her cruel fate.