It is fitting to pay tribute to the gold producers and manufacturers of the old Gold Coast. For 400 years before the introduction of cocoa, currently the country’s chief dollar earner, the gold industry and trade was the lynch-pin of the country’s economy

Underneath the land of Ghana lie ancient rocks called by geologists the ‘Birrimiam” and “Tarkwaian” series which are rich in precious metals, especially gold. Although much of the gold is located at great depth, fortunately some of it is found nearer the surface. In the case of alluvial gold, it is obtained by digging earth from the river, washing away the earth in a pan and collecting the residual gold. Where gold is located at depth, shafts are dug with picks and hoes to reach the gold.

There is evidence to show that by the 14th century, gold mining had already been initiated and that Mali traders were exporting gold from this country via Mali across the Sahara to the Maghreb, the Middle East and Europe. Valentini Fernandes wrote that from the 14th Century, Ungaros or Wangaras from Jenne were exporting gold from the Elmina area in exchange for salt from the Saharan region. In 1471, the Portuguese, Pedro de Escobar, reported on gold production by Akan indigenes.

A large gold mine at Ahanta was reported in 1489 to be producing some 20,000 doubloons of gold. The gold business expanded through the 16th and 17th centuries, in spite of the inroads of the slave trade. It is estimated that between 1400 and 1900 the Akan alone produced some one-and-a- half million kilograms of gold by means of traditional mining methods and tolls, and that an average of some 40,000 miners may have been at work when gold production was at its height. By 1910, the value of gold export was seven times that of cocoa. In 1959, exports reached a peak, bringing in a profit of several millions into the country’s treasury. Such was the wealth generated by gold in the past that it was not surprising that early Portuguese beneficiaries of the gold business decided to name the country ‘Gold Coast’.