In Kwabeng, in Ghana’s Eastern Region, young men and women wearing mud-splattered boots go back and forth on motorbikes and tricycles from the main road to the paths that go deep into the forest. Around them are acres of fruiting cocoa trees; swathes of thick green forests that stretch up hills as far as the eye can see. But nature is not these men and women’s immediate concern. Gold is. Illegal gold mining, to be exact, known as galamsey.
The illegal gold pits bring wealth to Ghana, directly employing over one million small-scale miners and accounting for 35% of the country’s gold production. With global gold prices having surged from around $1,800 per ounce in 2020 to over $4,000 in 2025, these illegal pits are a big boost for Ghana’s economy, and there are growing concerns that the government is sacrificing the environment to improve economic indicators and boost gold reserves.
But this wealth comes at the expense of health, in more ways than one. Some of illegal mining’s negative health impacts are well-reported, such as the contamination risk to local communities’ water, with galamasey having polluted at least 60% of Ghana’s rivers. Yet there is one particularly harmful effect that is still little known: the killing of the medicinal plants that 70% of Ghanaians depend on, particularly those Ghanaians who can’t afford modern healthcare.
