Galamsey: The cancer eating Ghana alive
Cancer does not announce itself with drums and trumpets.
It begins quietly, feeding on the body it inhabits, spreading cell by cell, until it overwhelms the organs that once gave life.
Today, Ghana’s environment is fighting for its life, and the cancer is galamsey.
We must stop pretending.
This is not just a “problem” or an “illegal activity.”
It is a disease that is eating into our rivers, farms, forests and the very soul of our nation.
And unless we cut it out, Ghana will bleed to death.
Rivers dying before our eyes
Once, the Pra, the Birim, the Ankobra and the Offin rivers ran clear.
Fishermen cast their nets, children bathed in cool waters, and women fetched clean water to cook the evening meal.
Today, those rivers run thick with poison.
They are no longer rivers- they are liquid graveyards.
Mercury and cyanide swirl through the waters, invisible killers that creep into our bodies.
Communities are forced to drink slow poison.
Fish die or become unsafe to eat. Ghana Water Company spends fortunes to treat water, but even they admit some rivers are beyond salvation.
Let us speak plainly: A nation can survive without gold, but it cannot survive without water.
So why are we selling our rivers for coins that will vanish tomorrow?
Why are we so foolishly rich in minerals and yet so poor in wisdom?
Farms turning into wastelands
Drive through once-verdant cocoa farms and you will see the devastation.
Vast pits gape like open sores.
Soil once rich with life now lies barren, stripped of its fertility.
Farmers stand helpless, watching strangers turn ancestral land into moonscapes.
Galamsey is not just destroying cocoa farms; it is destroying Ghana’s place in the global economy.
Cocoa is not only our pride, but our livelihood.
If the cancer of galamsey keeps spreading, our children will inherit dust where once we planted food.
And yet people keep digging. Why?
Because a young man can make in a week of galamsey what he would earn in three months of farming.
Galamsey is not just poison; it is bread.
It is a dangerous drug that pays today and kills tomorrow.
A slow genocide
Do we realise what mercury does to the human body?
It seeps into the kidneys, cripples the nervous system and causes deformities in children yet unborn. In mining towns, people are drinking sickness every day.
Children play in contaminated soil.
Pregnant women cook with poisoned water.
This is not only environmental destruction - it is a silent genocide.
A nation that allows its children to be poisoned is a nation writing its own death sentence.
The silence of leaders is deafening.
Where are our leaders?
Why do we hear only empty speeches while excavators roar through our forests and dredges choke our rivers?
The truth is bitter: some of the very people who should defend our land are feeding off its destruction.
Financiers with political ties fund galamsey.
Chiefs look away. Soldiers are bribed.
Big men protect the cancer, while poor villagers take the blame.
Silence in the face of evil is complicity.
And today, too many of our leaders are silent.
But let us be honest: if the people themselves do not rise, the politicians will not act.
Galamsey is a spiritual crime
This land is not just soil.
It carries the blood of our ancestors, the prayers of our mothers, the inheritance of our children.
To poison the rivers and strip the forests is not only an economic or ecological crime - it is a spiritual abomination.
How can we pour libation to the gods of the river while we allow mercury to suffocate that same river?
How can we kneel in church or mosque and pray for blessings while we destroy the creation of God?
This is not only about laws.
This is about morality.
This is about sin against the land itself.
Imagine Ghana in 20 years if galamsey continues unchecked: Rivers turned into poisonous streams, unfit even for animals.
Cocoa farms gone, our export pride lost.
Forests stripped, rainfall reduced, climate chaos worsening.
Food prices are skyrocketing because fertile land has been destroyed.
A sick generation, poisoned from the womb. And for what?
For gold that ends up in Dubai vaults and Chinese banks.
For riches that slip through our fingers while our nation chokes.
Is this the inheritance we want to leave?
To be remembered as the generation that traded water for gold, children for coins and life for destruction?
Call, we cannot ignore
Galamsey is a cancer, and cancers do not heal themselves.
They must be cut out, however painful.
If we wait, the body dies.
Ghana is the body.
And galamsey is the tumour spreading in every organ.
This is the moment for communities to rise.
Chiefs must stop pretending and take responsibility.
Youth must guard their land instead of selling it for pennies.
Pastors and imams must thunder from the pulpits against this sin.
Diaspora Ghanaians must channel their money not into parties and funerals alone, but into eco-jobs and land restoration.
We can no longer say “the government should.” Governments have failed.
The people must now say: enough.
Water is life, gold is death
Gold glitters, but water sustains.
A thirsty child cannot drink gold.
A barren field cannot be revived by coins.
When our rivers die, Ghana dies.
We must choose. Not tomorrow.
Not after another empty campaign promise.
Today, let this be the generation that stood up and declared: Our rivers are not for sale.
Our forests are not for sale.
Our future is not for sale.
Galamsey is the cancer eating Ghana alive.
And the knife to cut it out is in our hands.
