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Ghana has lost a staggering $11.4 billion in gold revenue over the past five years due to illicit smuggling from the artisanal mining sector, with most of the undeclared gold reportedly ending up in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a new Swissaid report has revealed.
The report uncovered a 229 metric tonne trade gap between Ghana’s official gold exports and the amount declared as imports by recipient countries—especially the UAE—between 2018 and 2023.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel Programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. “Informal gold is mostly hand-carried and doesn’t have to be declared in Dubai.”
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According to Swissaid, the smuggled gold often transits through Togo, Burkina Faso, and Mali, aided by weak border controls and informal networks. A senior official at Ghana’s Minerals Commission described the revelations as “a notorious fact”.
The report also blames poor tax policy for incentivising smuggling. In 2019, the government imposed a 3% withholding tax on artisanal exports, leading to a sharp decline in official declarations. Although the tax was later reduced to 1.5% in 2022 and scrapped in 2025, the damage had already been done.
An estimated 34 tonnes of gold went undeclared in 2023 alone—equal to the country’s entire reported artisanal output for that year.
Ghana, which earned $11.6 billion from gold exports last year, is Africa’s top gold producer. Yet the Swissaid report underscores the vast sums slipping through the cracks.
“The new government has shown some willingness to fix long-standing governance issues, but the pace has been quite slow,” said Bright Simons of the Imani Centre for Policy and Education.
Ghana’s experience reflects a broader pattern across the continent, where exporting nations record lower gold export volumes than those declared by importers—most notably Dubai.
Despite efforts by Dubai to introduce reforms to limit gold smuggling, analysts say these have achieved minimal success. Meanwhile, artisanal mining—though a livelihood source for millions—is increasingly exploited by criminal networks and insurgent groups across sub-Saharan Africa.
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