Community Mining: The Evolving Paradigm in the Ghanaian Small-Scale Mining Sector – The Case of Tokwae Community Mining Scheme in the Ashanti Region of Ghana

Globally, Ghana is one of the major mining jurisdictions that has rolled out community mining schemes in response to curbing illegal small-scale mining. However, knowledge about the emerging paradigm in terms of their capacity, operations, and contribution (COC) is very opaque. Little is also known about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges (SWOT) of scheme. Again, not much is known of the scheme’s efforts towards inclusiveness, responsible and sustainable mining (IRS) in the quest of bringing to an end the long-standing problem of illegal small-scale mining. The scheme according to the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources are intended to provide livelihoods for members in the mining communities, promote sustainable and responsible mining and bring to an end the problem of illegal mining. As a result, the paper sought to present the COC-IRS-SWOT analysis of the scheme as a basis for scaling-up of the scheme within mining communities in Ghana which will further form grounds and country study for replication within other mining jurisdictions in Africa. The study made use of the case study research approach in zeroing on the Tokwae community mining scheme. The study made use of content analysis, recursive abstraction, deductive reasoning, and triangulation of information to arrive at conclusion. The generally found that community mining schemes have the potential of employing several thousands of small-scale illegal miners in the country with improved working conditions, and contribution to reducing environmental degradation towards the achievement of the SDGs. The paper recommends that the scheme offers a good model for replication in other mining jurisdiction in Africa towards reducing the problem of illegal small-scale mining, environmental degradation and the sustainable development in Africa through the SDGs.