Prof Kwabena Frimpong‑Boateng, former Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, said Ghana’s rivers began to recover during the 2017‑18 moratorium on artisanal and small‑scale mining, but the safeguards that were put in place to sustain those gains were later abandoned.
Speaking at the Fourth Annual Colloquium of the Department of Political Science Education at the University of Education, Winneba, on 2 September 2026, the former minister noted that sections of the Pra River ran clear for the first time in years during the ban, and fishermen reported catching fish in waters that had previously been described as “dead.”
He recalled that Operation Vanguard, deployed on 31 July 2017 with 400 military and police personnel, had reduced water turbidity and lowered raw‑water treatment costs. However, the data collected during the intervention were never stored in a publicly accessible database or presented to Parliament in annual environmental audits.
After the ban was lifted on 21 December 2018, the government introduced safeguards to regularise small‑scale mining. Only miners with valid tax identification numbers and barcoded concessions could resume work; equipment had to be licensed and electronically tagged; and companies were required to employ a sustainable‑mining trainer from the University of Mines and Technology.
Other measures included a 30 per cent reclamation of already‑mined land within six months, a one‑year completion target, a six‑month probation period, and a code of conduct. The government also established 72 district committees on illegal mining, trained 3,000 miners, launched the GalamStop electronic platform, trained 140 drone pilots, and registered excavators with tracking devices.
Despite these steps, Prof Frimpong‑Boateng said the enforcement structure was dismantled or allowed to lapse while the permissions granted to miners remained in force. He questioned whether concessions still carried active barcodes, whether excavators remained trackable, and whether GalamStop was still operational in the 72 districts.
He urged that any conditional permission issued by the state should automatically expire unless there is documented proof that the conditions have been fulfilled, warning that without legal binding safeguards, benefits are taken and safeguards lapse.
What follows is a call for lawmakers to re‑enforce the safeguards that once helped Ghana’s rivers recover, lest the gains be lost again.
