Who is the leading gold producer in Africa?

Ghana, formerly the Gold Coast, is Africa’s leading gold producer. The country also ranks second in the world as a cocoa producer and has been extracting oil since 2010.

This country of 34 million inhabitants (World Bank, 2023) is emerging from its worst economic crisis in decades.

It benefits from an International Monetary Fund (IMF) aid plan of $3 billion over 3 years, approved in May 2023, and has restructured most of its external debt, on which it had defaulted in 2022.

For years he has been confronted with the negative impact of « galamsey »illegal mining, which poses serious risks to the environment by polluting soil and waterways.

This phenomenon threatens cocoa cultivation in particular. Faced with the economic crisis, a growing number of producers are selling their land to illegal miners, which is weighing on production.

The land of gold was a center of the African slave trade

After more than 80 years of British colonization, Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence on March 6, 1957.

Previously, between the 15th and 18th centuries, Ghana was an important departure point for the slave trade to Europe, America and the Caribbean.

Among the dozens of former slave forts that dot its coast, that of Cape Coast with its whitewashed walls, located 150 km southwest of the capital Accra, is popular with visitors.

Ghana launched in 2019, the so-called year of ” back “, a program encouraging African-Americans to come to Ghana to reconnect with their roots.

With AFP