State Capture in the Militarized Fight Against Illegal Small-Scale Goldmining in Ghana

This slim book addresses one of the most vexed questions about governance and politics in natural resources-rich, albeit poor, countries across the world. Why have most states in natural resources-rich developing countries failed to regulate their artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) industries? This failure is both intellectually and politically puzzling, because these same states demonstrate capability in different functions and regulations of other sectors of the economy. Ghana is a quintessential example of this puzzle. Despite its legendary reputation as a relatively well-governed, peaceful, and democratic country, its ASGM sector is characterized predominantly by informality, criminality, and horrendous environmental and human-development effects, which include the ferocious denuding of the country’s vegetation cover, toxic pollution of water bodies, and serious health and safety hazards inflicted on the rural populace in mining areas. This book seeks to contribute a fresh state-theoretical perspective, state capture, to unravel this puzzle. It argues that the chaotic, criminal, and ruinous Ghanaian ASGM sector – known in Ghanaian parlance as the galamsey menace – is caused by state capture. The Ghanaian state has been captured by the mining power-elites, something that allows them to undertake criminal and destructive mining with impunity. These state captors are not doing artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), but rather capitalist mechanized mining (CMM), which ravages the environment on a large scale and with breakneck speed. State capture in Ghana’s ASGM sector is demonstrated clearly in the book through vivid description and rigorous analysis of the failed militarised fight against the galamsey  menace between 2017 and 2022. This is the period the Head-of-State and Commander-in-Chief of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) vowed to fight and defeat the perpetrators of this crime at the risk of losing his presidency. He then declared war on the perpetrators and commandeered the coercive apparatuses of state, led by the GAF, to fight it. The book argues that the state failed spectacularly to win this war, the evidence of which is the aggravation of the deleterious environmental and human effects of galamsey. For example, the rivers and water bodies of Ghana have witnessed unprecedented levels of poisoning with lethal chemicals. The rural populace in mining communities is inflicted with serious maternal and neonatal health hazards, such as hideous congenital and physical disorders of some babies born in these communities, and sadly, the deaths of these babies. Why, despite its overwhelming coercive capacity, did the Ghanaian state fail to win a war against a weak enemy: galamsey operators, who are mostly unarmed civilians, and operating in plain sight of state agencies? Using the lens of state captured, this book addressed this question, offering fascinating and penetrating insights into the puzzle. Being the first to do this, the book contributes to advancing theory, methods, and political praxis in the study and governance of the ASM industry in Ghana. As failed military crackdowns on illegal ASM are common across natural resources-rich developing countries, the contribution this book makes may be germane to these countries in, say, Latin America and Asia.