Ghana is located in the fertile West Africa, known as the "gold coast" of Africa. Currently, the proven gold reserves are about 985 tons, accounting for 3 percent of the world's total gold output, and the annual output value is about $1.5 billion, which is the second largest producer and exporter of gold in Africa just after South Africa. It was once a mecca for Chinese people, and a large number of Chinese prospectors were rich here, but the locals were too poor to go hungry.
Twelve years ago, a Chinese man who come from shanglin County, Guangxi Province came to Ghana with $800,000, and for three years, the cash was snowballing to $16 million. The story was spread in Guangxi that had driven thousands of gold prospectors into Ghana.
Now, in Ghana, a small West African country, there are more than 50,000 shanglin people gathered here, and they are known as the shanglin faction. Most of the small gold mines were controlled by them.
Almost all of Ghana's small or medium-sized gold mines are in the hands of the shanglin people. Of the 3.6 million ounces of gold that Ghana produces each year, 40 percent come from the gold mine owned by the shanglin faction.
The arrival of the Chinese brought technical changes to Ghana's mining industry. They brought in excavators and the technology of "sand gold", let Ghana take gold from the original manual workshop into the mechanical age.
The ghanaians have their own mining companies, against some large companies from abroad, and some small gold miners to develop the land that has been developed.
However, Ghana's industrial production capacity is low, gold mining equipment and technology are backward, and most of them adopt primitive gold mining methods. Most of the locals work in mining areas to earn money for their families.
Deforestation has become a very serious problem in this area. In order to exploit gold mines, They had to destroy the local vegetation. Of course, the government is trying to stop this kind of digging.
The poor condition of the local gold miners in Ghana, although they are in touch with the most precious gold in the world, life has not changed. It is still low income and barely living.
Gold miners in Ghana are still using the old method of gold mining, which is inefficient and poor in quality and can hardly be cheap on the market. In the picture, the workers sifted the sand gold with flowing water to filter the sand.
They washed the sand in the water, and finally screened out a little bit of gold. Compared with the damage, this little bit of gold is too small. In the picture you can see this is the mine owner's total cost of the day, 243.5g.
The gold granule is melted into gold by fire, which is the profit of the shanglin people to Africa. The Chinese people pursue the production of gold, do not want intensive cultivation, once the mining volume is not good, immediately switch to another land. So it was a serious environmental problem that was left to the local people, so the Chinese gold miners were severely punished, and now they are basically out of Ghana, and basically the gold mine is the world of ghanaians.
very interesting. thanks
You have educated many people with this post and i'm sure many more will learn too. The Chinese have really messed up our land and water. Because of the illegal mining we didn't have water for some time. It was terribly bad.