Mining communities must become economic shareholders – GoldBod CEO

The CEO of the Ghana Gold Board, Sammy Gyamfi, has urged mining communities to be considered as economic shareholders rather than just land donors. Speaking at the National Mining Dialogue in Accra on August 18, 2026, Gyamfi lamented that despite gold mining having been a part of Ghana for over a century, communities hosting these operations have not seen significant transformation.

"Mining communities must no longer be treated as land donors," he stated, "They are custodians of the resource hence must be treated as development partners and economic shareholders."

Gyamfi highlighted the ongoing issues of poverty, poor infrastructure, lack of clean water, and youth unemployment in these communities, despite the presence of valuable mineral resources. He emphasized that it is unacceptable to continue extracting gold from the soil of these communities while they remain mired in poverty and lack access to basic amenities like potable water and roads.

"We cannot continue to mine gold from the soil of our communities while poverty, lack of access to potable water, poor roads, youth unemployment and weak local economies remain the daily reality of too many mining communities in our country," he said.

He called for increased local ownership, refining, and value addition to ensure that Ghana retains more of the wealth generated from its minerals. "If we want a new story, we must own more, refine more, process more, fabricate more and retain more," Gyamfi asserted. He argued that mining can only maintain its social license when host communities directly benefit from the wealth extracted from their lands.

"Production without ownership is limited. Production without value addition is leakage. Production without community transformation is a broken social contract," he warned.