EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES, THE STATE AND HOST COMMUNITIES: A STUDY OF GOLD MINING INDUSTRY IN GHANA. Book by: Agbesinyale, P., Tenkorang, E. Y., Dankwah, M (2012)

Abstract

The reader cannot fail to acknowledge that a book of this content and caliber was long overdue. The authors touch upon a delicate topic which is of vital importance and they go about that task with striking devotion, appropriate methodology and a befitting discourse. They set the tone by acknowledging the tremendous contribution of some institutions and individuals that contributed to make their work possible and less cumbersome to some extent and that is spread on the pages from the ‘Acknowledgement to the Table of Contents’. The following institutions are mentioned, to be more specific: Oxfam America and its West Africa Regional Office (WARO), the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN), Ghanaian communities and key individuals and also organizations located in Ghana, like WACAM and ISODEC. The preface of the book poses clearly that West Africa and the mining activity have been bed-fellows for centuries and adds that a new dimension was added to that practice in the 1990s, when ‘a gold rush on an industrial scale began’(p.3). The first pages of the work also point out that gold mining is present in two other countries close to Ghana (Mali and Burkina Faso), although the focus of the book is the case of Ghana.