Ghana's Toxic Gold Rush

"The landscape along the road approaching Konongo, in Ghana's central Ashanti Region, had the feel of a sprawling construction site. On either side of the potholed thoroughfare, mounds of cinnamon‑colored dirt lurked just beyond the sparse greenery. Hulking excavators dotted the area, both at the roadside and off in the distance, straddling fields punctuated by turbid, muddy ponds."

"Today, the cocoa and oil palm trees-like the fields of cassava, corn, and plantain that were also cultivated throughout Ashanti-are gone. They've been replaced by a jumble of cement-block homes interspersed with those ugly mounds of soil and murky ponds-the visible signs of a ferocious gold rush that has, not for the first time, upended life across Ghana."

"For centuries, gold has been both a boon and a curse for this region. It was the area's gold reserves that enabled the Ashanti Kingdom to emerge as one of West Africa's most powerful in the late 1600s-just as it was gold that led to its undoing when the British, lured by the precious metal, descended on the land and, in the 19th century, ultimately colonized it. Ghanaians would not win independence until 1957."

The road into Konongo now resembles a construction site, with excavators, mounds of cinnamon-colored dirt, turbid ponds, and a potholed thoroughfare. A once-clear river is brown and sluggish, no longer suitable for swimming, drinking, or irrigating cocoa farms. Trees and perennial crops such as cocoa, oil palm, cassava, corn, and plantain have been cleared. Family land has been sold to gold miners, converting agricultural plots into pits and cement-block housing. The gold rush has upended local livelihoods and altered the landscape. Historically, gold both empowered the Ashanti Kingdom and attracted colonial conquest, with Ghana achieving independence in 1957.

Read at The Nation