Ghana provides excellent empirical contexts to develop the state of the art. Illegal gold extraction is prolific in all of the country’s regions, and nationally comprises a multi-billion dollar ‘sector’, supporting an estimated 1.1 million people, and producing a substantial 23% of the country’s total gold annually. Clearly, illegal artisanal gold extraction undermines statutory rights to land, citizenship rights, and the formal authority of local, regional, and central governmental institutions through encroachment, civil unrest, and long-term settlement.

New research 2021: Illegal resource extraction and state formation in emerging African democracies: https://ddrn.dk/3523/