Livelihood Access and Challenges in Mining Resettlement Communities: Insight from Ghana

Abstract

The study acknowledges that though mining has contributed to the development of many economies globally, it comes with unanticipated challenges especially on the people who are directly affected by the mining activities.  The study aims to understand the implications of such challenges faced in mining resettled communities and the versatile practices followed to stay in the mist of such livelihood challenges in mining resettlement communities.  The study also focuses on the copying strategies adapted to cope with these challenges in mining resettlement communities.  Qualitative approach was done to capture the rich essence of the subject matter.  The study used focus groups and in-depth interviews as techniques and interviewed members from different households of the mining resettlements communities (Salman, Teleku-Bokazo and Nkroful) including land owners, opinion leaders, chiefs and from the institutional perspectives.  As a result, it was found out that the livelihood challenges that clearly manifested itself was in the area of income, employment and morbidity issues.  The evidence was shown that in all the challenges, copying measures are in place to enable the people live in their new settlements, but not adequate.