How will Ghana use AI to solve the galamsey problem?

What galamsey actually is

Galamsey, a word that loosely translates as "gather and sell," refers to illegal artisanal gold mining that operates entirely outside Ghana's formal regulatory system. Roughly 5.5 million Ghanaians are directly or indirectly reliant on artisanal and small-scale mining, which is what makes a simple ban so difficult. Small-scale mining produced $11 billion in foreign exchange earnings in 2025, eclipsing for the first time the country's industrial gold mining output of $9 billion. But most small-scale mining is illegal, with 70% to 80% of artisanal miners unlicensed, according to Ghana's Minerals Commission.

The damage is serious. Ghana's Water Resources Commission has reported that approximately 60% of the country's water bodies are polluted. The IMF has warned that galamsey is destroying farmlands, forests and water bodies, undermining agriculture and driving up the cost of water treatment.

What AI is actually doing on the ground

Ghana is deploying artificial intelligence, GPS trackers and drones to crack down on illegal gold mining that has poisoned its rivers and destroyed its forests.

At the Mining in Motion 2025 summit in Accra, Dr. Sylvester Akpah, Lead Consultant at the Minerals Commission, showcased how drones provide real-time aerial surveillance of mining concessions, with AI integrated into the system to analyse drone footage and pinpoint the exact coordinates of suspected illegal mining activities. His framing was blunt: "With AI, we can determine whether a site is legal or illegal. Once that's confirmed, security agencies can be deployed to take appropriate action."

The results so far are striking. Over 120 drones deployed across mining corridors feed imagery to a central hub, where AI has improved illegal site detection accuracy from 58% in 2022 to 92% in 2025, cutting response times from five days to less than twelve hours. The system reportedly prevented ₵400 million in potential gold-smuggling losses.

The four AI tools in play

Satellite and drone surveillance. AI monitors illegal mining activities through satellite imagery and drones equipped with computer vision technology, detecting unauthorized operations, tracking the movement of excavators and identifying changes in land use patterns that indicate illegal mining.

Geofencing. AI establishes virtual boundaries around authorized mining concessions, ensuring activities don't encroach on protected water bodies and forests, and sends real-time alerts to authorities when illegal mining is detected within those boundaries.

Predictive analytics. AI-driven predictive analytics forecast potential illegal mining hotspots by analyzing historical data, environmental factors and socio-economic conditions, allowing for proactive measures before severe damage occurs.

Community reporting. AI enhances community-based reporting systems where residents use mobile apps to report suspected illegal mining, with natural language processing analyzing the reports to identify patterns and prioritize responses.

The honest problem: technology alone won't be enough

The 2026 national budget allocates GHS 150 million to NAIMOS, the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat, for operations, environmental cleanup and land restoration. Analysts argue the allocated funds may be insufficient given the scale and persistence of illegal mining.

Even today, the Deputy Executive Director of A Rocha Ghana, Daryl Bossu, has acknowledged the government's rCOMSDEP programme, the Responsible Cooperative Mining and Skills Development Programme, contains measures that could help, but has raised concerns about implementation. A 2023 academic study confirmed that repeated crackdowns had not produced sustained reductions in environmental damage, with political corruption and inconsistent enforcement cited as the primary reasons.

Galamsey has become a dangerous criminal enterprise that threatens national and regional security, "supporting a sprawling illicit economy involving hundreds of thousands of miners, transnational financiers, foreign operators, gold smugglers, equipment suppliers, and criminal intermediaries."

The AI infrastructure is real and it is working at the detection level. The harder problem is that detection is only step one: enforcement, political will and an alternative livelihood for 5.5 million people are what determine whether a drone alert becomes a closed mine or just a log entry nobody acts on.