By Gifty Boateng
President John Dramani Mahama, has expressed concern about the frightening number of excavators in Ghana, saying it is the highest in Africa.
The president, has announced a policy shift aimed at ensuring that the importation of these earth moving machines, are done in a regulated manner and monitored.
“Ghana has more excavators than any other country in Africa”, he said while speaking at the Global Mining in Motion Summit on Monday, June 2, 2025, stressing the need for a more effective regulations to control mining activities.
The president said what his administration is going to do is to change the current permit regime.
“We are going to change the permitting regime. You will not be allowed to import an excavator or put it on a ship unless you get a permit before you can bring an excavator,” he stated.
The new policy shift will ensure that excavators imported into the country are tracked to monitor if they are being used for the reasons they were brought into the country.
“We will track excavators as the ministers said, in order to know if they are being used for illegal mining or not,” he added.
Ghana, for years, has been grumbling with the devastating effects of small scale and illegal mining popularly known as galamsey. Forest reserves and water resources have been destroyed due to the use of these excavators and poisonous chemicals.
Touching on small scale mining, President Mahama said artisanal miners are not bad as they are seen, if they are made to mine in the right manner.
He argues, these miners can contribute immensely to the developmental agenda if they are properly trained and supported to operate well and also reclaim the destroyed lands.
“Artisanal miners are not enemies of the state. If properly trained and supported, they can be allies in our development. Working together with small scale miners will reclaim our forest reserves and restore the purity of our water bodies.
Our river guards are working on clearing mining activities in our water bodies and on the banks of our rivers. We have successfully cleared out illegal miners out of nine no go zone forest reserves,” he clarified.
Adding “Mining cannot be sustainable unless it is also responsible. Environmental degradation, water pollution and community displacement are not inevitable by-products of mining. They are the consequences of poor governance and enforcement. By strengthening the environment, social and governance framework, across the mining sector this will include mandating site rehabilitation. This means that small scale miners and medium scale miners must also have rehabilitation clauses in their permits to reclaim the land”.
As part of these new measures, a comprehensive tracking system is being implemented to monitor excavators across the country. It involves tagging and installing tracking devices on all excavators, both ones imported now and those already in the system.
The Minerals Commission, in collaboration with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA), will be the implanting institutions.
Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, on his part stated that trained enforcement officers will be stationed in Ghana’s ports of entry to tag excavators that are coming into the country.
Simultaneously, teams will be deployed across the country to tag existing machines, starting from Accra. These teams will work in conjunction with the police and military to ensure compliance.
Additionally, the DVLA has commenced mandatory registration of all excavators entering Ghana, aiming to prevent unregistered machines from bypassing regulatory processes and being used in illegal mining operations.