Chinese Illegal Gold Miners in Ghana
Guest Post: Chinese Illegal Gold Miners in Ghana Ghanaian Workers at Chinese Mine (credit Yang Jiao, 2011) This guest blog post is by Yang Jiao, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida who has been doing fieldwork on Chinese business in Ghana. On May 14th, Ghana's Ministerial Task force led by the President Mahama launched a crackdown on illegal gold mining. It targets any foreigners who operate in small-scale gold mining (or Galamsey as Ghanaians call it). By June 6, 169 Chinese miners were detained and sent to Accra. 124 of them were detained at Ghana Immigration Services and another 45 Chinese miners detained at the prison of Bureau of National Investigations. On Jun 10, all 169 were released and ready to return to China. This is not the first time Chinese illegal miners were detained in Ghana, but certainly the most intense since Ghana’s last election. Large influx of Chinese miners in mineral-rich African countries is rare. But the incident in ...