GoldBod plans ASM formalization, financing programme next year

The Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) will next year roll out an Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) Formalization and Financing Support Program (FFSP), its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Sammy Gyamfi, has announced.

Gyamfi said the programme will be run in close collaboration with the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), and Rand Refinery. He said it aims to sustainably ramp up gold production, mineral revenue, and job creation, while reducing operational costs and environmental risks.

He made the announcement in a keynote address at the Mining in Motion summit, held on the theme “ASM Formalization; the new paradigm”, and repeated it in a later statement.

In the address, Gyamfi said regulation “must be firm, but also practical, inclusive and commercially sound”. Reform, he said, will endure only when compliance becomes a pathway to opportunity rather than hardship.

He argued that mining regulations must do more than police miners. They must also formalise operators, build capacity, and create opportunities for young Africans in the mining and trading ecosystem. With proper formalisation, financing, and training, he said, ASM can support livelihoods, generate foreign exchange, strengthen reserves, grow indigenous enterprise, and advance national development sustainably.

Gyamfi said GoldBod believes properly organised small-scale mining offers one of the clearest pathways “from mineral ownership in law to indigenous ownership in practice”. Supported by modern technology and sound engineering, he said, the sector can optimise recovery rates, reduce waste, improve safety, and preserve the environment.

In the follow-up statement, Gyamfi said support will be available to miners whose activities do not harm water bodies, forest reserves, or what he called “obscene places” in communities. Mining in those three settings, he said, is irredeemably wrong and cannot be tolerated or reformed. Unlicensed operators outside them can be formalised under the government’s Responsible Cooperative Mining and Skills Development Programme (rCOMSDEP), which he described as a better approach than chasing miners with soldiers.

The statement also sought to clarify his earlier remarks at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), a clip of which he said had been “mischievously” cut and circulated without his explanation of the support government is willing to offer.

The announcement follows Gyamfi’s remarks in a Space conversation on X on 9 August 2026, in which he said Ghana legalised ASM in 1989 but successive governments failed to provide the support needed to sustain it. He also pointed to weaknesses in registering and monitoring mining equipment and in tracking activity across mining areas.

GoldBod has faced allegations from some critics that it legitimises illegal mining. The board has denied this, saying it deals only with licensed aggregators.