Linkages in Ghana's gold mining industry: Challenging the enclave thesis
Robin Bloch and
George Owusu
Resources Policy, 2012, vol. 37, issue 4, 434-442
Abstract:
By 2009, Ghana was the second-ranked African producer after South Africa, and had become the world's ninth largest producer of gold, at some 3.8% of global production, up from 2.6% five years earlier. Gold production volumes and revenues rose significantly over the decade from 2000. Yet gold mining tends to be perceived negatively in Ghana, and is seen as providing far less than it should in terms of public revenue, employment, skills development and spillovers, and localised economic development. Gold mining is often depicted as having an enclave status, disconnected and isolated from the rest of the economy. In contrast, the research findings here demonstrate that after a period of strong investment and growth, gold mining can no longer be viewed as an enclave activity: it is in fact more deeply linked into the Ghanaian economy than hitherto understood, through a set of as yet under-researched but promising economic linkages, notably backward linkages, which can potentially be strengthened by policy and support measures.
Keywords: Enclave; Ghana; Gold mining; Linkages; Global value chains; Industrialisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L72 O13 Q33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301420712000402
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jrpoli:v:37:y:2012:i:4:p:434-442
DOI: 10.1016/j.resourpol.2012.06.004
Access Statistics for this article
Resources Policy is currently edited by R. G. Eggert
More articles in Resources Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().