Ghana's headline numbers look good. Inflation stood at 5.0 per cent in August 2026. The Bank of Ghana policy rate has come down from 28 per cent to 14 per cent. The cedi has held its ground. The government presents all of this as the fruit of its Resetting Ghana agenda.

I do not accept that account. Sound economic policy normally takes eighteen months or more to show in the numbers. Ghana's turnaround showed within January 2025. Three forces explain it far better than policy. The Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) has bought record volumes of small-scale gold that no one can yet trace to a lawful source. The world gold price reached historic highs. And the government has held down spending by leaving cocoa farmers, teachers and others waiting for money they are owed.

Meanwhile, the flagship 24-Hour Economy markets are being rushed, with works going on behind hoardings that carry no signboard, no displayed permit and no safety warnings. The bill for this so-called miracle is being paid by our rivers, our forests, our farms, our classrooms and our young people. This article sets out the evidence and asks for honest accounting.

A Turnaround Too Fast to Be Policy

President Mahama was sworn in on 7 January 2025. By April 2025 inflation had fallen to 21.2 per cent. By August 2025 it was 11.5 per cent, the lowest in four years. By December it was 5.4 per cent, and in February 2026 it touched 3.3 per cent. The cedi gained about 21 per cent against the dollar in the first eight months of 2025. The policy rate was cut again and again, from 28 per cent to 14 per cent by March 2026.

Ghanaians are entitled to ask which new policy did this in so short a time. The 24- Hour Economy had not started. The Big Push roads had not been built. No new factory had come on stream. Something else was pouring dollars into the Bank of Ghana. That something was gold.

Gold Bought Without Questions

The Deputy Minister of Finance told Parliament in June 2026 that GoldBod bought 135.8 tonnes of gold between January 2025 and May 2026. Of this, 135.2 tonnes came from the artisanal and small-scale mining sector. That is about 98 per cent. GoldBod spent roughly US$16.1 billion on these purchases, including US$9.8 billion in 2025 alone.

GoldBod's own Chief Executive says small-scale mining earned Ghana nearly US$11 billion in foreign exchange in 2025, against about US$9 billion from the large mining companies. Small-scale output reached a record 104 tonnes and overtook large￾scale mining for the first time. In the first half of 2026, GoldBod bought another 50 to 54 tonnes.

Here is the problem. GoldBod announced in July 2026 that it would only procure a gold traceability system by the end of August 2026. For more than eighteen months, the state bought well over a hundred tonnes of gold with no system to follow it from the pit to the export counter. On paper, licensed buyers may only buy from licensed miners. In our mining communities everyone knows how thin that paper is. Nobody in government can tell the nation how much of this gold came from lawful concessions and how much was dug out of the Ankobra, the Pra, the Offin and our forest reserves.

The President himself told TIME magazine that more than 1.5 million Ghanaians work in galamsey, and described it as an issue of livelihoods. Wider estimates put the number who depend on it at over four million. In March 2026, he admitted that illegal mining has drawn in traditional rulers and party appointees. I do not exempt my own institution from that charge. But the central fact stands. The state has become the biggest customer of the industry it says it is fighting. The dollars that steady the cedi are, in large part, galamsey dollars.

Low Inflation Built on Unpaid Bills

Inflation can also fall when government simply does not pay. Money held back from a farmer or a teacher never reaches the market. Demand falls, and so do prices. Living standards fall with them. Economists call this fiscal compression. It flatters the index while the household suffers.

Cocoa farmers who delivered beans in November and December 2025 were still unpaid in February 2026, when arrears had passed GH¢10 billion. On 12 February 2026, the farmgate price was cut by nearly 29 per cent, from GH¢3,625 to GH¢2,587 per bag. By July 2026, about GH¢3.4 billion was still owed to farmers and licensed buyers. This month the buyers say COCOBOD still owes them about GH¢4 billion for last season, with no clear funding for the new one.

On Friday, 25 September 2026, GNAT, NAGRAT and PRETAG have declared a nationwide strike. Teachers promoted after examinations in December 2025 and February 2026 have not been placed on their new salary scales, and their arrears date back to January 2026. The Collective Agreement expired in June 2026 and has not been renegotiated. The Deprived Area Allowance for teachers in hard-to-reach communities remains unpaid. Our children are at home because the government is balancing its books on teachers' backs.

What the Index Does Not Show

The headline rate is an average. The market woman in Aiyinasi does not buy an average. Inflation has now risen for two months running, to 5.0 per cent in August 2026. Inside that figure, transport inflation is 10.5 per cent. Housing, water and energy stand at 10.2 per cent. Services are rising at 8.6 per cent. The Central Region recorded 11.1 per cent.

Electricity tariffs went up by 9.86 per cent and water by 15.92 per cent in January 2026. A small electricity cut in April did not undo that, and in July electricity rose again by 3.49 per cent. Over the same period the national daily minimum wage rose by just 9 per cent, to GH¢21.77. Ordinary Ghanaians feel the gap between the published index and the cost of living every single day.

Aiyinasi: Where the Numbers Meet the Ground

In my own town, a young man can earn around GH¢1,000 a day in a galamsey pit. The national daily minimum wage is GH¢21.77. That is roughly forty-six times more. No apprenticeship, no trade school and no honest employer can compete with that. Our carpenters, masons and electricians have put down their tools and gone to the pits. Local building work stalls for lack of artisans. A whole generation is skipping trade training. When the gold runs out, or the pit collapses, these young men will have neither farmland nor a trade to fall back on.

And pits do collapse. NADMO reports about 30 deaths in mining incidents in the Eastern Region alone since January 2026. Seven miners died at Asaman Tamfoe in Atewa East on 29 August 2026. The Peasant Farmers Association says more than 500,000 farmers and their dependants have been denied the use of their land. As a Health, Safety and Environment professional, I also see the slower harm: mercury in the water, open pits that drown children, and soils that will not grow food again for a generation.

The 24-Hour Economy Market: Development Without Due Care

In opposition, the promise was jobs around the clock. In government, the promise has become 261 model markets, one in every district. Each is to have a police post, fire post, clinic, warehouses, a lorry terminal, a crèche and more. Sods have been cut across the country on the Resetting Ghana tour, at Bimbilla, Kukuo, Bole, Asesewa, Assin Bereku and Juapong. Nobody objects to good markets. The problem is speed. The buildings are moving on a political timetable, and basic duties of care are being skipped. I have seen this firsthand at the 24-hour market site in Aiyinasi.

A hoarding has gone up, and works are going on behind it. There is no signboard. The public cannot see who the contractor is, who the client is or who is supervising the job. There are no commencement or completion dates. No building permit is displayed.

As a Health, Safety and Environment professional, I see real safety risks in this. The hoarding carries no hazard warnings, no notices against unauthorised entry and no protective equipment requirements. Traders, pedestrians and schoolchildren pass the site every day with nothing to tell them what lies behind the fence. If a resident sees an unsafe excavation or a loose hoarding panel, there is no name or number to report it to. If there is an accident, nobody outside the site knows whom to call.

Trucks and plant moving in and out of a busy town need marked access points and warning signs that the public can see. A signboard is the first safety document on any public works site. It tells the community who is building, under what permit, and whom to hold responsible if something goes wrong. When it is missing, the community's safety becomes an afterthought. That is the opposite of due care and attention.

Accountability is also blurred at the top. I was told at the Presidency that the 24-hour markets do not fall under the 24-Hour Economy Authority. This was confirmed publicly in August 2026. The markets belong to the Ministry of Local Government and the district assemblies, funded from the District Assemblies Common Fund. A flagship programme without one clear owner invites exactly the shortcuts we see at Aiyinasi.

Then there is the question of jobs. A market without reliable power, security, transport and credit for night trading will open for a few hours and close. I have seen no published plan showing how many jobs each market will create, or for whom. Unemployment stood at 13.0 per cent in the Ghana Statistical Service survey for the third quarter of 2025. Without that plan, the 24-Hour Economy risks becoming a two-hour market.

The Environmental Bill Nobody Is Counting

The President says nearly 49 forest reserves were invaded by illegal miners. GDP counts the gold we sell. It does not subtract the river we lose, the forest we clear or the farmland we poison. That is natural capital, and we are spending it as income. Someone will pay to clean the rivers, restore the land and treat the sick. It will be the same Ghanaian taxpayer, and our children after us. An economy that looks healthy only because it is consuming its own foundations is borrowing from the future without telling the lender.

What Government Must Do

Government should publish GoldBod purchase data by district and by licence, and state plainly how much gold came from verified lawful sources. GoldBod should refuse gold that cannot be traced to a licensed concession with a reclamation bond. A fixed share of GoldBod earnings should fund land and river reclamation, and a transition fund to retrain artisans and young miners and return them to their trades. Cocoa arrears and teachers' arrears should be paid in full on a published timetable. The Ghana Statistical Service should publish regional cost-of-living measures alongside the headline rate. Every 24-hour market should come with a jobs target, reported district by district.

No 24-hour market should break ground until its signboard, permit, contractor details and emergency contacts are displayed on site, with proper hazard signage on every hoarding.

Traditional authorities, myself included, must be held to account through the District Mining Committees on which we sit. The fight against galamsey cannot be won by the same state that is buying its output without questions.

Conclusion

Ghana deserves a recovery built on work, trade and production. What we have is a recovery built on gold of unknown origin and bills left unpaid. The numbers are real. The story told about them is not complete. I call on the President to tell Ghanaians the whole of it, and to put the health of our land and our people above the look of the index.