Who has influence? Conversions of cocoa farms into artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Ghana

While many Ghanaian communities with artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASM) activities report negative economic and societal outcomes, research shows positive outcomes in some communities, raising the question of factors that results in the observed differences. To contribute to addressing this question, we focused on privileging the voices of local actors involved in land conversion, their levels of influence beyond what is currently present in the literature, as well as understanding dynamics in the process of land-use conversions. We held 102 individual interviews with representatives of state institutions and community-level respondents, 4 focus group discussions, and developed 5 Process Net-Maps from two communities in the Ashanti and Western North Regions of Ghana. Our findings from the perspective of the local respondents are that the most influential actors were the chiefs and landowners, while miners had average influence levels. Where Civil Society Organizations were considered significant, their role was mainly in managing the outcomes of conversion and not the process of conversion itself. Enabling factors such as land tenure, origin of the miner, and the presence or absence of a large-scale mine were also important determinants of the outcomes experienced when farmlands were converted for ASM activities.