By Issah Mohammed, GNA
Accra, Oct. 29, GNA – The Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) is developing a preventive framework to address security risks associated with artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Ghana.
The framework is centered on community resilience, livelihood opportunities and conflict prevention, as key interventions to mitigate risk in the sector.
Ms Alessia Polidoro, the West Africa Regional Manager of GCERF, said mining-related challenges extended beyond environmental degradation to include insecurity, instability and conflict within communities.
“It is also a sector that is creating the conditions for insecurity, instability, and it is driving conflict within communities,” she said.
Ms Polidoro said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, on the sidelines of a two-day Regional Community of Practice gathering in Accra, which brought together practitioners and policymakers to share experiences and identify collective responses to challenges in the mining sector.
She said GCERF had spent about a year engaging stakeholders across Ghana’s mining landscape to develop the framework, which would introduce a preventive security perspective into efforts to formalise artisanal and small-scale mining.
Ms Polidoro said the initiative would involve communities, national authorities, regional administrative authorities, traditional leaders, private-sector players and other stakeholders with roles in the mining sector.
“Our main interest is to strengthen mining community resilience, but that work can only happen when communities are also at the driving seat,” she said.
She said the two-day gathering provided a platform for participants from Ghana and other countries to exchange experiences, build strategic partnerships and identify practical actions to address security challenges associated with artisanal and small-scale mining.
“We also believe that exchange, creating that space for dialogue, and bridging the divide among actors that usually do not sit on the same table is important, to look at the same problem from different perspectives and find common solutions,” she said.
GCERF began engaging in Ghana in late 2023, following the Ministry of National Security’s involvement as a partner and member country.
Ms Polidoro said the fund had invested US$3 million in Ghana to support 11 civil society organisations working to address the economic, political and civic drivers of radicalisation and instability.
The interventions include community awareness campaigns, dialogue, support for alternative economic opportunities for vulnerable groups, and capacity-building for traditional leaders and local authorities to prevent and manage conflicts.
She said the proposed mining-sector framework formed part of broader efforts to strengthen community resilience and prevent violent extremism.
GNA
Edited by Christabel Addo
29 Oct. 2026