Ghana, Africa’s top gold producer, has lost a massive $11.4 billion due to gold smuggling over just five years, a new report by the Swiss nonprofit Swissaid has found. The report uncovered a huge gap—229 metric tons—between the amount of gold Ghana officially exported and what countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) reported importing. Most of this gold ended up in Dubai.
Instead of going through official channels, a large amount of gold mined in Ghana is smuggled out of the country. It often leaves Ghana through Togo and then enters the UAE without being declared. Some gold also travels through Burkina Faso and Mali, using weak and poorly monitored borders.
In many cases, the gold is hand-carried on flights into Dubai. Since gold brought in by individuals often doesn’t need to be declared, this allows huge amounts of unrecorded gold to flow into the UAE. “Hand-carried gold does not have to be declared in Dubai,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation. He noted that “informal gold is mostly brought in on flights”, showing how easy it is to avoid detection.
The Rise of Gold Transactions: Russia’s Strategy to Bypass Sanctions
Tax Policy Backfired, Then Was Reversed
In 2019, Ghana introduced a 3% tax on artisanal gold exports. Artisanal mining refers to small-scale operations, often done by individuals or families using simple tools. While the goal of the tax was to increase revenue from these miners, it had the opposite effect. Rather than pay the tax, many miners and traders chose to smuggle their gold out of the country.
As a result, the volume of officially declared gold exports dropped. The government noticed this and, in 2022, lowered the tax to 1.5%. That helped a little, and more gold was exported through formal channels. Then, in March 2024, the tax was scrapped entirely.
Following the change, Ghana’s finance minister praised the reforms, saying artisanal exports had risen. But the Swissaid report paints a different picture. It says that in 2023, about 34 tons of gold went undeclared—nearly the same amount as Ghana’s total artisanal gold production for that year. That suggests most of the artisanal gold is still being smuggled out, tax or no tax.
Known Problem, Slow Fixes
The smuggling issue is not a surprise to those working in Ghana’s gold sector. A senior official at the Minerals Commission described Swissaid’s findings as “a notorious fact”. That means people inside the system have known about this problem for years.
Despite efforts to fix the issue, progress has been slow. Ghana earned $11.6 billion from official gold exports in 2023. If the smuggled gold had been declared, the country’s earnings could have been much higher. This is money that could have been used to improve schools, hospitals, roads, and other important services for Ghanaians.
$150 Million Money Laundering Scheme to Fund Russian Invasion through Gold Purchase Exposed
A Continent-Wide Pattern
Bright Simons, a policy expert at Accra-based think tank Imani Center for Policy and Education, said, “While the new government has shown some willingness to fix some governance issues that have bedeviled the gold sector for years and which were largely ignored by the previous administration, its pace has been quite slow.”
Ghana’s struggle with gold smuggling mirrors problems across the African continent. Many gold-producing nations report lower exports than what importers like the UAE declare. Although Dubai has introduced reforms to control gold smuggling, results have been limited.
At the same time, artisanal gold mining continues to support the livelihoods of over 10 million people across sub-Saharan Africa. But it has also become a funding source for organized crime and armed groups, creating even more challenges for countries like Ghana.