Background that does not expire. Written for the person who wants to actually understand a story, not skim past it — and updated when the facts change, never quietly deleted.
Ghana has been trying to stop illegal gold mining for over a decade. Taskforces formed and disbanded, excavators burned, ministers sacked. The rivers are still brown. Why every crackdown fails, and who actually profits.
9 min read DiasporaMost people sending money home could not tell you what the transfer cost — because the largest charge is never printed on the receipt. Where the exchange-rate margin hides, and how to calculate the real price.
8 min read BusinessGhana exports gold, cocoa and oil, and the currency has still lost value for two decades. Those facts are compatible, and the reason why is the entire explanation. Four real drivers, two myths.
8 min read GhanaYou cannot understand illegal mining without understanding legal mining. Four licence types, one nationality rule, and five gaps in between that most galamsey operations live inside.
7 min read GhanaThe body currently running Ghana's anti-galamsey enforcement. What it does, what it cannot do, and the single number that would settle whether it is working — which nobody publishes.
6 min readEvery explainer ends with a section headed what we could not verify. That is deliberate. Where we could not source a figure to a document we could show you, we say so rather than borrowing a number from somewhere else and hoping.
We also avoid publishing figures that move — exchange rates, licence fees, corridor costs. A stale number on a permanent page misleads more than no number at all. What we publish is the mechanism, because mechanisms are what actually persist.
If you can supply a record we could not find, we will publish it and correct the page in public. [email protected]