Drivers of illegal mining in the Amansie West District using the partial lease square model

Illegal mining is one of Ghana's most prominent socioeconomic and environmental challenges. Despite several interventions by successive governments to deal with the menace, the activity continues to thrive largely because proposed interventions fail to address the underlying drivers of the challenge. Using quantitative data from face-to-face structured interviews conducted in the Amansie West, an illegal mining hotspot district in Ghana, this study analyzes the interrelations between the drivers of illegal mining using the Partial Lease Square (PLS) model. The model revealed a direct positive relationship between poverty, unemployment, and weak institutional, regulatory, and legislative frameworks and illegal mining while high mining profitability and corruption showed an indirect negative relationship with illegal mining. Furthermore, poverty and unemployment were observed to be the strongest and most significant positive drivers of illegal mining (estimate: 0.84, p-value: 0.001) followed by weak institutional, regulatory and legislative framework (estimate: 0.25, p-value: 0.0004). On the contrary, high profitability of mining (estimate: −0.18, p-value: 0.002) and corruption (estimate: −0.24, p-value: 0.002) recorded a significant but negative relationship with illegal mining. The study therefore concludes that initiatives undertaken by government agencies to ensure sustainability in the ASM sector mining must be rooted in livelihood diversification and poverty alleviation and in a balanced institutional, regulatory, and legislative environment.