$3m Galamsey Drones Missing? – Presidency & National Security Lack Answers
As wanton illegal mining continues to raise alarm in almost every sphere of Ghanaian life, key government agencies are using national security to evade questions about the whereabouts and use of 200 costly drones bought to track down illegal miners and halt their operations.
The drones were acquired in 2018 for three million US dollars, according to the then Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, John-Peter Amewu.
The then Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Charles Bissue, in July 2018 acknowledged the arrival of the drones.
“The drones have arrived in the country to support the president’s position that we have to do mining responsibly,” he said in interviews with the media. “Each district will have one, and the regional coordinating councils will have one so they can monitor the district mining committees. There is going to be a monitoring center at the office of the president too.”

Numerous images of the monitoring center were taken and published, but there was no photographic evidence to prove that the drones were actually in the country – as is usually done when the government acquires fleets of vehicles or other machinery. Only three drones were seen in the images taken of the monitoring centre. It took a month after Mr Bissue’s comments for the chairman of the IMCIM, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, to provide evidence that some drones had actually arrived in the country. Even so, only three of the drones (out of a total of 200) were put on display.
“These are some of the drones that we have been able to acquire,” Prof. Frimpong- Boateng, who was also at the time the Minister for Environment, Science and Technology, said. “One has thermal sensors that will allow us to deploy in the night because we had a situation where the team did not operate in the night because they did not have night vision equipment.”

Hopes were raised only to be dashed as it appears the drones were hardly ever used as part of the fight against illegal mining.