Social dialogue and land use planning foster peace among cocoa farmers and gold miners in Ghana

To build peace among cocoa farmers and gold miners in Bibiani district, Ghana, partners in the Shared Ground project took a critical step in November – a four-day social dialogue and training workshop that is already contributing to the project’s goal of improving the resilience and sustainability of these vital sectors. 

The one-year project is led by Pact and funded by the Chocolonely Foundation, which supports projects and organizations that contribute to prosperous cocoa growing communities in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, facilitate systemic change, and challenge the status quo. Other key partners in the Shared Ground project include Solidaridad West Africa and the Ghana Cooperative Cocoa Farmers and Marketing Association (GCCFA).

Across Southern Ghana, both cocoa farming and small-scale gold mining have been undertaken for centuries. Today, both sectors provide critical livelihoods for millions of Ghanaian women and men, and alongside oil, gold, and cocoa constitute the country’s main export earners with some $11.64 billion USD in gold and some $1.94 billion USD in cocoa being exported in 2024 alone.

However, the past decade has seen increased tensions between cocoa farmers and gold miners. As small-scale gold mining continues to proliferate amid increased foreign investments and record-setting gold prices (reaching $4,381.58 USD/ounce in October), the informal nature of much of this sub-sector – locally described as ‘galamsey’ – and associated poor mining practices continue to cause environmental harm, including on cocoa farms. During a conflict analysis undertaken by the Shared Ground project team in Ashanti, Eastern and Western-North regions in July-September 2025, it was observed that small-scale gold miners routinely arrange compensation payments with landowners and local authorities to access farmland. Such arrangements are frequently made after mining licenses were issued and mining or prospecting activities have already begun, often causing the partial destruction of cocoa farms or their access roads, and/or contaminating local water sources. 

This issue is widespread and is causing frustration among cocoa farmers and communities. Although the land use conflict has not yet assumed a clear violent character, there is limited direct communication between cocoa farmers and small-scale gold miners, and their reported mutual trust levels are low in the areas visited by Shared Ground. This is why the project is working to prevent conflict while pursuing more sustainable land use solutions that benefit all.

On 25-28 November, the project partners organized a four-day workshop with cocoa farmers, gold miners, and local authorities in Asawinso ‘A’ in Bibiani district, Western-North region, where the issue is particularly pronounced. The workshop started with social dialogue to openly discuss the issues, allow all stakeholders to share their grievances, and collectively reflect on underlying root causes. This served firstly to complement and validate findings from the conflict analysis. As Mr. Philip Baido, a manager with Beeva Mining Enterprise, notes, it also fostered mutual understanding and unity among gold miners and cocoa farmers: 

To contextualize the issues at the local level, the project partners facilitated a Participatory Land Use Mapping exercise to identify key features (such as infrastructure, cocoa farms, mine sites, and forests) and overlapping areas around the target communities, Nkatieso and Asawinso ‘A’. This was done in groups marking large prints of satellite imagery with the boundaries of such land use features.

Next came two training days where cocoa farmers and gold miners were separately trained on technical topics. Gold miners received training on:

• Sustainable mine planning across all stages of the ‘mine life cycle’ – covering responsible practices at all stages from mine development and exploration to mineral extraction, processing, and land reclamation.
• Mining regulations to help miners understand their legal requirements.
• Mine safety and mercury-free mineral processing solution.

Cocoa farmers received training on:

• Land registration and ownership and associated laws and regulations, enabling them to better understand such legal processes and their rights.
• Climate-smart cocoa production including practical considerations in land rehabilitation, preventing and managing the spread of fungicides such as ‘blackpod’, and integration of shade trees to protect cocoa from climate impact.

Leveraging participants’ improved mutual understanding and technical insights to chart a concrete path to sustainable and peaceful cohabitation, participants were finally organized into groups to brainstorm concrete solutions. These were then pitched and discussed in a plenary session, where proposed actions were reviewed and agreed on, distilled into smaller steps, and assigned with associated responsibilities. The agreed actions formed the basis of a Sustainable Cohabitation Action Plan to be implemented by the identified stakeholders after review and validation.

In 2026, stakeholders will pilot the implementation of this action plan with ongoing monitoring, coaching, and technical support from the project partners to ensure that everyone enacts their assigned responsibilities while adjusting the plan as needed. 

As Mr. Prince Sakyi Manu, Secretary of the Asawinso “A” Co-operative Cocoa Farmers and Marketing Union Limited, remarked, the workshop is already having impacts on farmer-miner disputes even before the mentioned action plan is implemented:

Our hope is to maintain this momentum and demonstrate that through inclusive dialogue and sound land use planning, more sustainable cohabitation is possible, inspiring similar change across Ghana.