Ghana lost an estimated $11.4 billion in gold revenue due to rampant smuggling in the artisanal mining sector. A new report by Swiss nonprofit Swissaid, released on June 11, 2025, revealed that most of the gold ended up in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), particularly Dubai.
Swissaid uncovered a 229-metric-ton trade gap between Ghana’s declared gold exports and import data from its trade partners. The report points to Dubai as the main destination for the missing gold.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation. He explained that people often carry gold on flights without declaring it. This makes it difficult to trace, especially when it arrives informally in Dubai.
The report also traced gold smuggling routes through Togo, Burkina Faso, and Mali. These routes take advantage of weak border controls across West Africa.
A senior official at the Minerals Commission acknowledged the issue, calling it “a notorious fact.” However, the Ministry of Finance has not yet responded to the findings.
Swissaid also criticized a 3% withholding tax introduced in 2019 on artisanal gold exports. The tax caused formal exports to decline sharply and pushed more traders into the black market. The government cut the tax to 1.5% in 2022 and abolished it entirely in March 2025, but experts say these changes came too late.
In 2023 alone, Ghana produced around 34 metric tons of artisanal gold. Swissaid estimates that nearly all of it went undeclared.
Although Ghana earned $11.6 billion in official gold revenue in 2024, experts believe the sector remains vulnerable. Bright Simons from the IMANI Center for Policy and Education noted that the government has shown some effort to fix the problems, but the pace is slow.
Across Africa, gold-exporting countries consistently report lower export numbers than what importing countries, especially the UAE, declare. While Dubai has promised reforms, results remain limited.
Artisanal mining provides income for over 10 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. But its growing ties to organized crime and unregulated trade are drawing fresh calls for stronger oversight.
