Unpacking the dual impact of informal gold mining on educational attainment in resource constrained Communities

Abstract

Contemporary studies on informal mining have often referred to the economic positives without much focus on the social benefits of it particularly relating to educational financing for youths in mining areas. This study contributes to this discourse by connecting educational attainment and informal mining among youths in the Nabdam District of Northeastern Ghana. The study relied on insights from individual interviews and focus group discussions with 62 participants who were recruited through convenience and snowball sampling techniques to explore how informal mining affect educational activities in the Nabdam District. The analysis of the collected data revealed that informal mining help miners to finance the educational continuity of their relatives while student miners self-finance their education from mining proceeds. On the negatives, we found that miners who are students share their time between schooling and miming affecting school contact hours. Fatigue from mining sites also affects their attention span and reduce their class participation levels. The study calls for the demilitarisation and democratisation of informal mining regulatory policies while recommending a community-based approach to regulating informal mining activities so as to ensure that communities benefit from improved incomes to finance education while preventing child labour and student involvement.