Chinese illegally mine gold in Ghana

Cover image of "Gold of Our Fathers," a novel about gold mining in Ghana

Shortly before the turn of the twenty-first century, Chinese interests began investing in the mining industry in Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique. Soon, Chinese money and people started showing up wherever in the continent minerals were abundant. And in Ghana the mineral in question was gold. Ghana is Africa’s second-largest gold producer after South Africa. Illegal mining by Chinese nationals there has destroyed large areas of forest and polluted lakes and rivers. Tens of thousands of Chinese citizens are involved. The Ghanaian American novelist Kwei Quartey skillfully brings the dynamics of the illegal gold mining in Ghana to light in the second of his captivating Darko Dawson detective novels, Gold of Our Fathers.

An unwelcome assignment for Chief Inspector Dawson

Recently promoted to Chief Inspector in the Ghana Police Service, Darko Dawson is struggling to balance his stressful duties at work with the love he feels for his wife and their two children. His new boss shows promise of making his life more livable. But on Dawson’s first day he orders Dawson to move from Accra to remote Obuasi in the Ashanti Region. The area is notorious for illegal gold mining. But Dawson’s assignment isn’t to lead a single investigation for a few weeks, as he’d done from time to time. He’s to relocate for a full year.

The move disrupts the entire family, as they too must move. His wife will need to find a new job, and the children will require new schools. And they’ll have to find a new place to live. But Dawson will have little time to help them. Because on his second day in Obuasi, as he tries to bring some order to the mess he discovers there, word of a murder far afield in the forest reaches the station. The body of the Chinese owner of an illegal mine has turned up buried in the pilings of his own mine.

Gold of Our Fathers (Darko Dawson #2) by Kwei Quartey (2017) 382 pages ★★★★★

Photo of local men involved in illegal gold mining in Ghana — The men working this illegal small-scale gold mine in Ghana are all African, but the bosses are Chinese who cut deals with corrupt officials. Image: Heidi Woodman – Danish Development Research Network

An investigation fraught with complications

On arriving at the site of the murder, Dawson discovers that the local police have proved incompetent at preserving the crime scene. And the murdered man’s brother has removed the body and washed it to be returned to China. Then he learns that this murder may be related to another that took place some months earlier. The murdered man had reportedly killed a local man, whose brother and father have clear motives for revenge. But so does an American who owns a mining site that adjoins that of the murdered man and his brother. And, further complicating the situation, an investigative reporter for the Guardian is gathering evidence of corruption by police and government officials that enables the Chinese operations.

But that earlier murder, the American’s possible involvement, and corruption that may involve his new boss, are only three of the complications Dawson encounters. Like most Ghanaians, he speaks several of his country’s major languages. (Eighty are spoken in Ghana.) He converses freely in English and Twi as well as Pidgin English, the three most widely spoken tongues.) But other languages predominate in the Ashanti Region, and not everyone speaks English, Twi, or Pidgin English as a second, third, or fourth language. Conversation with the local people is awkward at times. And then there are the Chinese. Some speak Mandarin, others Cantonese, still others less-well-known Chinese languages and dialects. Dawson manages to secure the services of an interpreter to question the wife and brother of the murdered Chinese man. But that only scratches the surface of the problem. Because nearly everybody is lying.

Photo of the environmental damage from illegal gold mining in Ghana — *Illegal Chinese gold mining in Ghana has left the earth devastated, small farms destroyed, and rivers polluted. Image: South China Morning Post*

Is China taking over control of Africa’s resources?

Sensational articles in the Western press might give the impression that China will soon dominate mining for essential minerals in Africa. But these fears are overblown. Overall, Chinese interests control about eight percent of Africa’s mining sector. While this is up from 6.7 percent in 2018, it’s still less than half that of the West. However, China has indeed made major inroads in securing two strategic minerals—copper and cobalt—and, to a lesser extent, lithium. China reportedly controls forty-one percent of Africa’s cobalt production and twenty-eight percent of the copper. If the trend continues, the threat to US leadership in high tech may well be threatened.

About the author

Photo of Kwei Quartey, author — *Kwei Quartey. Image: Penguin Random House*

“Kwei Quartey was born in Accra, Ghana to a Ghanaian father and an African-American mother, both of whom were lecturers at the University of Ghana.” He studied medicine at the University of Ghana Medical School and, later, at Howard University in Washington, DC. Quartey began practicing in 1990, and for twenty years as a physician he wrote detective fiction early in the mornings. He is now retired from medicine and writing full-time. Dawson is the author of five novels in the Darko Dawson series and three to date in the newer Emma Djan series of private eye novels. He lives in Pasadena, California.

For a superb account of Chinese mining in Africa, see Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddhartha Kara (How Our Cell Phones and Electric Cars Depend on Virtual Slavery).

I’ve reviewed three other books in Quartey’s Darko Dawson series of police novels: