Galamsey in Ghana

Along with colleagues from the University of Ghana and York’s departments of Environment and Geography and Languages and Linguistic Sciences, Henrice Altink has been awarded £34,000 from the University of York’s government-funded Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) for a scoping project into the environmental, health and social issues arising from small-scale gold mining (SSM) in Ghana.

This kind of mining is known as ‘galamsey’ and is often illegal. It involves over one million miners and accounts for 30 per cent of the country’s gold output. Galamsey is extremely harmful to both the environment and health and poses great safety risks.

Henrice will lead a work package that explores the historical spread of SSM. The project will also explore contemporary issues, including how local communities conceptualise their activities and assess their risks, and do some ‘scenario mapping’ – a way of getting people to consider alternative futures for themselves. The project runs from January to July 2019.