This chapter draws on the insights of state capture theory to analyze the militarized fight against galamsey, launched as part of President Akufo-Addo’s vow to fight and end its environmental menace, even at the cost of his presidency. He made this pledge in 2017, during his first year in office, and referring to the stakes of the 2020 Ghanaian presidential election. Even though he won the 2020 presidential elections, at the time of finalizing the writing of this book (September 2024), his vow remained unfulfilled. Indeed, illegal capitalist medium-scale mining (CMM), which we conceptualize as CMM galamsey had flourished and continued to flourish despite the series of militarized fights mounted against galamsey in general. This contradiction presents an intellectual and political puzzle, which we contend can be explained with the insights of state capture. We argue the Ghanaian state under the government of President Akufo-Addo has been captured by the mining-power elites, both within and outside government, through a sprawling network of kleptocratic actors. These actors have configured a shadow state that feeds off the formal state. As a result the military fights against galamsey between 2017 and 2024 were bound to fail. Drawing on empirical evidence, we show that the militarized operations against galamsey selectively enforced the ASM laws, targeting only the powerless and the “unconnected” subaltern class, while protecting the powerful and the politically well connected. The militarized fights were shaped by class alliance and political power. The powerful and politically well-connected class have captured the state, repurposing its institutions to protect their interests. As such, galamsey is not an enemy that can be fought with military might, weaponry, and operational strategies. By deploying such strategies, one misses the complex interplay of forces and acts of state capture that have created, nurtured, and deepened CMM galamsey before the military operations were launched to fight it. The military’s focus on the arrest of miners and seizing of mining equipment in the field, signals barking up the wrong tree: they have not correctly identified the enemy they are fighting, let alone fight it. Yet this enemy, the shadow state, is amorphous and difficult to identify and fight. The key conclusion of this chapter—and the book as a whole,—is that the president’s tough rhetoric and military crackdowns  on galamsey were façades, masking the shadow state.

State Capture in the Militarized Fights Against Galamsey, 2017–2024

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发表日期：

2025年

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Jasper Abembia Ayelazuno,
Maxwell Akansina Aziabah

摘要

This chapter draws on the insights of state capture theory to analyze the militarized fight against galamsey, launched as part of President Akufo-Addo’s vow to fight and end its environmental menace, even at the cost of his presidency. He made this pledge in 2017, during his first year in office, and referring to the stakes of the 2020 Ghanaian presidential election. Even though he won the 2020 presidential elections, at the time of finalizing the writing of this book (September 2024), his vow remained unfulfilled. Indeed, illegal capitalist medium-scale mining (CMM), which we conceptualize as CMM galamsey had flourished and continued to flourish despite the series of militarized fights mounted against galamsey in general. This contradiction presents an intellectual and political puzzle, which we contend can be explained with the insights of state capture. We argue the Ghanaian state under the government of President Akufo-Addo has been captured by the mining-power elites, both within and outside government, through a sprawling network of kleptocratic actors. These actors have configured a shadow state that feeds off the formal state. As a result the military fights against galamsey between 2017 and 2024 were bound to fail. Drawing on empirical evidence, we show that the militarized operations against galamsey selectively enforced the ASM laws, targeting only the powerless and the “unconnected” subaltern class, while protecting the powerful and the politically well connected. The militarized fights were shaped by class alliance and political power. The powerful and politically well-connected class have captured the state, repurposing its institutions to protect their interests. As such, galamsey is not an enemy that can be fought with military might, weaponry, and operational strategies. By deploying such strategies, one misses the complex interplay of forces and acts of state capture that have created, nurtured, and deepened CMM galamsey before the military operations were launched to fight it. The military’s focus on the arrest of miners and seizing of mining equipment in the field, signals barking up the wrong tree: they have not correctly identified the enemy they are fighting, let alone fight it. Yet this enemy, the shadow state, is amorphous and difficult to identify and fight. The key conclusion of this chapter—and the book as a whole,—is that the president’s tough rhetoric and military crackdowns on galamsey were façades, masking the shadow state.