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By Maxwell Akalaare Adombila

June 23, 20253:21 PM GMT+9Updated June 23, 2025

TARKWA, Ghana, June 23 (Reuters) - As the afternoon sun beats down on Gold Fields' sprawling Tarkwa gold mine in southwestern Ghana, three men launch a drone into the clear sky, its cameras scanning the lush 210-square-kilometer tract for intruders.

The drone spotted something unusual, and within 20 minutes a 15-person team including armed police arrived on the scene. They discovered abandoned clothing, freshly dug trenches, and rudimentary equipment amid pools of mercury and cyanide-contaminated water. The equipment was left behind by so-called wildcat miners, who operate on the outskirts of many of the continent’s official mining ventures - putting at risk their own health, the environment and the official mine operator's profits.

The team confiscated seven diesel-powered water pumps and a "chanfan" processing unit used to extract gold from riverbeds.

The high-tech cat-and-mouse game is playing out with increasing frequency as record gold prices, now sitting above $3,300 per ounce, draw more unofficial activity - intensifying sometimes deadly confrontations between corporate concessions and artisanal miners in West Africa, according to dozens of mining executives and industry experts interviewed by Reuters.

"Because of the vegetation cover, if you don't have eyes in the air, you won't know something destructive is happening," explains Edwin Asare, Gold Fields Tarkwa Mine's head of protection services. "It's like you first get eyes in the sky to help you put boots on the ground.”

Almost 20 illicit miners have been killed in confrontations at major mining operations across the region since late 2024, including at Newmont, opens new tab and AngloGold Ashanti's sites in Ghana and Guinea and Nordgold's Bissa Mine in Burkina Faso.

There have been no reports of official mine staff injured. In some cases, clashes at corporate mines caused production halts of up to a month, prompting companies to press governments for more military protection.

'BOOTS ON THE GROUND'

Sub-Saharan Africa's unofficial mining operations provide critical income for nearly 10 million people, according to a May United Nations report.

In West Africa, three to five million people depend on unregulated mining, accounting for approximately 30% of its gold production, other industry data show, serving as economic lifelines in a region with few formal employment opportunities.

Like 52-year old Famanson Keita in Senegal's gold-rich Kedougou region, many inhabitants grew up mining gold in their localities. With simple and traditional methods, they earned extra incomes to supplement those from farming until corporate miners arrived, relocating them from their communities and promising jobs and rapid development.

"Those promises have not been fulfilled," said Keita. "Many of our young people are employed in low-level, uncontracted jobs with little pay and no stability. Small-scale farming alone cannot sustain our families."

While local residents have long tried to eke out a living on the margins of corporate mines, much of the illicit activity, particularly in the region’s forests and large bodies of water, is now conducted with sophisticated digging and dredging equipment and funding from local cartels and foreigners, including from China.