Appropriate technologies or appropriating technologies? Technopolitics within artisanal and small-scale mining in Ghana

Date published

2025-07-01

Free to read from

2025-06-04

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Publisher

Elsevier

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Article

ISSN

0301-4207

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Citation

Ofori AD, Awolorinke AC, Amankwaah GA. (2025) Appropriate technologies or appropriating technologies? Technopolitics within artisanal and small-scale mining in Ghana. Resources Policy, Volume 106, May 2025, Article number 105641

Abstract

This article contributes to the discourse on the significance of “appropriate” technologies in formalising artisanal and small-scale gold miners' activities. By raising the question of what or who defines what is “appropriate” for artisanal miners, the paper engages critically with the ignored and complicated spatial and temporal dynamics that underpin miners’ decisions regarding technologies and the impact of these choices on the political ecology of artisanal gold mining. Until recently, technologies used by small and artisanal miners have been known to be crude and rudimentary, with deleterious impacts on the natural environment. Hence, the policy drive to formalise illegal miners has emphasised the essence of appropriate technologies, depoliticizing the complex underpinning factors that shape technology adoption and rejection. Thus, the paper focuses on two technologies that have become prevalent in the artisanal mining scene in Ghana, i.e. the Chinese Changfa and the Trommel, to demonstrate the complex and myriad ways miners determine which technology is appropriate. Appropriate technologies, the paper argues, are determined based on a multifaceted combination of socio-political, economic, ecological, biophysical and cultural factors. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these observations on the formalisation of artisanal miners amid the increasing demand for energy transition minerals in developing economies.

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Github

Keywords

4407 Policy and Administration, 44 Human Society, Environmental Sciences, 3801 Applied economics, 4802 Environmental and resources law, Artisanal and small-scale mining, Technopolitics, Political economy, Technologies, Ghana, Gold

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Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

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