Accounting for informalisation in Africa’s extractive industry: Evidence from Ghana’s small-scale gold mining sector during the colonial period.

In this paper, we draw on the accountability and institutional theories to explicate the informalised state of Ghana’s small-scale gold mining sector as an exemplar of informalisation of the extractive industry in Africa during the colonial period. We present a critical and historical perspective on the role of colonial subjugation that took the form of discriminatory policies and lack of accountability, in laying the foundations for the current challenges of continuous informalisation of the indigenous gold mining sector and its implications on livelihoods, the economy and the environment in Ghana. We analysed archival data on the mining industry in Ghana, consisting of official correspondences between colonial bureaucrats in Britain and Ghana, as well as colonial policies on mining, interpreted through the lenses of institutional theory. Specifically, we used records comprising letters, mineral policies, mineral output, and labour relations in the Gold Coast during the colonial period as well as minutes of meetings held by those governing mining enterprises that operated in Ghana before 1957. We also drew on periodic reports of the Ghana Chamber of Mines and their member enterprises, Government of Ghana white papers, parliamentary records among others. We found that the colonial authority, as the new institutional power with vested interest in the extractive industry, adopted discriminatory policies that banned small-scale gold mining by indigenous population in Ghana, marginalising the sector’s operation to the advantage of foreign large-scale gold miners. We demonstrate that the control of mineral resources by the colonial authority under new ownership structures disenfranchised the indigenous population and their right to the mineral resources of the Gold Coast. We argue that this institutionalised discriminatory policy, and the resulting lack of accountability is largely responsible for the ongoing informalisation of Ghana’s small-scale gold mining sector.