Galamsey is not a Political Problem, it is a Moral One

I do not believe that Presidents Akufo-Addo or Mahama have encouraged galamsey out of a wanton disregard for the lives of Ghanaians. The problem, rather, is that they are both trying to solve a moral crisis with political tools. They are looking for a strategy that preserves votes, manages the economy, and protects their political survival — when what is demanded is a reckoning with the conscience of a nation.

The political calculus is easy to see. More than three million Ghanaians are engaged in galamsey in one form or another. To clamp down decisively would mean alienating a large and volatile bloc of voters, many of them young and economically desperate. No politician wants to own that kind of social explosion in an election year. So instead of leadership, we get posturing — committees, task forces, national dialogues — the theater of urgency without the substance of moral courage.

Then there is the economic fear. Gold remains one of Ghana’s few stable sources of foreign exchange. In a time of ballooning debt and a perpetually fragile cedi, the proceeds from small-scale mining provide a perverse kind of cushion. Every leader knows that removing that flow, even temporarily, could send shockwaves through the economy. So they hesitate. They compromise. They rationalize.

But perhaps the deepest paralysis comes from proximity — from the uncomfortable truth that the networks of galamsey wealth run perilously close to the political class itself. Too many of the powerful have family or friends entangled in the trade. Too many party financiers depend on it. A real fight would mean not only confronting poor, desperate miners, but confronting the comfortable — the insiders whose luxury homes are built on poisoned rivers and ghosted forests.

These are the political arguments that the leadership class has with itself. They make sense — but only if one has surrendered the moral imagination. Because the problem of galamsey is not political; it is moral.

The Moral Reckoning

Three million Ghanaians are directly exposed to mercury and other toxic chemicals that guarantee them short, painful lives. Millions more farmers are watching their lands turn infertile, their crops fail, their livelihoods disappear. Entire communities are condemned to drink poisoned water, eat contaminated food, and raise children in landscapes stripped of life.

This is not a matter of policy trade-offs; it is a matter of right and wrong. It is about what kind of people we are and what kind of future we are willing to steal from our children.

We are watching in real time as a country kills itself for the illusion of short-term survival. Every cedi gained from galamsey carries an invisible cost in hospital bills, ecological collapse, and generational poverty. The wealth that comes from it is counterfeit — gold washed in poison.

What Moral Leadership Would Mean

If our leaders saw this for what it is, there would be no argument left to have. They would not need to debate the economics or the votes. The moral facts would be unambiguous. No society that knowingly poisons its people to balance a budget deserves to call itself developing.

A moral response would mean telling the truth, even when it hurts: that galamsey is not employment; it is collective suicide. It would mean mobilizing faith leaders, chiefs, scientists, artists, and youth not as political props but as a moral movement. It would mean publicly isolating and prosecuting every elite beneficiary of the trade — not selectively, but completely.

And it would mean the President himself finally standing not as a negotiator of interests but as a moral witness — a man willing to lose an election rather than lose his country.

A Nation’s Conscience

We do not lack intelligence or technology; we lack conscience. Our rivers are not dying because we cannot protect them, but because we refuse to care enough. Our leaders, in both parties, have mistaken political caution for prudence and public relations for leadership.

The political mind counts votes. The moral mind counts lives. Until Ghana’s leadership learns to do the latter, we will continue to mistake slow death for progress.

Galamsey is not a political problem. It is a moral one — and no nation has ever survived by negotiating with its own destruction.