In 1886, prospectors found gold on a ridge in the Transvaal. Within a decade, Johannesburg was the centre of the world’s largest gold industry. Around the same time in what is now Ghana, European companies were opening industrial gold mines at Tarkwa and Obuasi.
More than a century later, the three places could hardly be more different. Johannesburg is South Africa’s largest city and its business and financial centre; gold mining is now a small part of its economy. Tarkwa and Obuasi are still known mainly for their gold. They depend on one or two companies, many households lack basic services, and when the mines slow down, so does everything else.
This matters to me personally. I have Ghanaian roots, and I want these towns to thrive long after the gold is gone. I compared them with Johannesburg for my master’s research, completed in 2017, to answer a question that matters to every country with minerals: why does the same resource build a diversified economy in one place but not another? Revisiting that research in 2026, I find its findings still hold, so alongside each one I note where Ghana stands today.
Mining town or mining city?
A mineral discovery can produce two kinds of settlement. A specialised mining town depends almost entirely on extraction. A trade mining town uses mining to build links to other industries, until its economy no longer rises and falls with the mine.
Johannesburg began as a specialised mining town and grew into a trade mining town that decoupled from gold. Tarkwa and Obuasi have remained specialised mining towns, even though modern mining began in all three at about the same time.
Johannesburg is proof that this transformation can happen on this continent. If one African city could do it, other African mining towns can too, even at a different scale. Mineral resources have a proven ability to catalyse growth and development. What they need is the right political, socio-economic and technical climate.
What made the difference
The usual explanations for the “resource curse”, such as volatile prices and politics, mattered here too, but they did not explain everything. My research identified five things that set Johannesburg apart.
1Nature
The Witwatersrand is the largest gold deposit ever discovered, and Johannesburg sits on its outcrop. Its ore was more than ten times richer than that of Tarkwa and Obuasi, concentrated in a small area and mined underground, so the mines employed large workforces and could exist alongside housing, farming and industry. In Tarkwa and Obuasi, large surface mines employ fewer people and have displaced households and farmland. No policy can change the grade of an orebody. It shapes the scale of what can be built, but not whether lasting development is possible.
2Investment
Once the industry was established, most of Johannesburg’s capital came from investors who lived there, spread across many companies. They reinvested the revenue in the city: in power, water, transport, a stock exchange and, later, manufacturing and finance. In Ghana, most investors have always been foreign and profits have flowed abroad. Decades of instability after independence, when not a single new mine opened, mean the industry has had only about thirty years of sustained modern investment.
Ghana in 2026Mineral exports reached a record US$21 billion in 2025, and a revised mining law before Parliament would give Ghanaians majority ownership of medium-scale mines. The question is whether this money builds lasting businesses in Tarkwa and Obuasi, or simply passes through.
3The state
Despite their differences, South Africa’s political rivals and successive governments worked towards one long-term economic vision: gold as the foundation of the economy. The development of the economy came before party or personal interests. In Ghana, colonial rule sent the value of gold abroad, and later instability, centralised government and weak local authorities meant little wealth stayed in the mining districts, with development planned from Accra rather than from the districts themselves.
Ghana in 2026Ghana is a stable democracy, yet its political parties do not share one economic vision for mining, and each change of government tends to bring a new direction. The mining districts need a national commitment that outlasts elections.
4Linkages
Johannesburg’s mines created demand that grew whole industries. Mining houses set up their headquarters in the city, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange was founded in 1887 to finance the boom, and the Rand Refinery, built just outside the city in 1920, added value to gold at home. Demand for power, transport and food built Eskom, Transnet and local industry, protected by government policy. Manufacturing began as a service to the mines and grew to overtake mining as the centre of the city’s economy.
Tarkwa and Obuasi tell the opposite story. Most gold left Ghana unrefined, most mine purchasing went to Accra or abroad, and local suppliers lacked the skills, capital and support to compete. When Obuasi’s underground mine was scaled back in 2014 and later placed on care and maintenance, most of its workers lost their jobs and many local businesses closed with it. The mine reopened in late 2019 after a major redevelopment, but the shutdown showed how exposed a town is when its economy rests on one mine.
Ghana in 2026The Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod), set up in 2025, now requires small-scale gold to be refined in Ghana before export, and new rules reserve surface mining for Ghanaian-owned contractors. The next test is whether this value reaches the mining districts, not only Accra.
5Research
South Africa invested heavily in mining research, and government backed the Chamber of Mines Research Organisation (COMRO), which made the country a mining research capital of the world. Its mines went deeper than any others, and gold kept paying long enough for other industries to take root. Tellingly, after COMRO closed, Johannesburg lost much of its capacity to solve its own technical problems. Ghana, too, has under-invested in mining research.
Ghana in 2026There are encouraging signs, including Chamber of Mines funding for gold recovery research at the University of Mines and Technology in Tarkwa, and new studies on community mining. But the effort is still project by project. Ghana needs a national mining research strategy with steady funding.
A necessary caution
Johannesburg is not a model to copy. Its gold economy was built on a migrant labour system that paid black workers very little and on racial laws that became apartheid, and its wealth still sits beside extreme inequality. The lessons worth taking are the choices that turned mining into lasting local capacity: a long-term vision, keeping value local, building linkages and investing in skills and research. Those choices can be made far more fairly.
What Ghana’s gold towns can do now
Tarkwa and Obuasi do not need to become Johannesburg. The goal is not the same scale but the same direction: a local economy that keeps growing when the mines slow down. Their late start can even be an advantage, because they can learn from Johannesburg’s mistakes.
- Treat the mining years as a window. Use mining’s demand, revenue and skills to build other industries before the ore runs out.
- Keep more value in the district. Make sure local refining and contracting benefit suppliers and jobs in Tarkwa and Obuasi, not only Accra.
- Plan from the district up. Give district authorities a clear local development plan, predictable mining revenue and the capacity to use it.
- Invest in people and research. Train the towns’ young populations and fund research steadily, building on the University of Mines and Technology.
- Bring small-scale mining into the plan. It now produces more than half of Ghana’s gold; regulated, safer and cleaner, it can do far more for local economies.
- Count the costs. Restore land and protect water, or the damage will cancel out the benefits.
- Keep a long-term view. Agree on a vision for the mining districts that outlasts changes of government.
The bottom line
Gold does not build cities on its own. But Johannesburg shows that, on African soil, it can be the start of something lasting.
What happens on the ground, and the climate created around the mine, decide whether a mineral deposit leaves behind a diversified economy or a town that stays dependent on mining. For Tarkwa, Obuasi and mining towns across Africa, that outcome is not fixed. It is still a choice.
This article summarises my MSc (Eng) research at the University of the Witwatersrand, which compared sustainable economic development in Johannesburg, Tarkwa and Obuasi. A full academic paper based on it is currently under peer review. The “Ghana in 2026” notes draw on the public sources below.
Sources for 2026 notes: Ghana Chamber of Mines, 2025 industry performance (Ghanaian Times, June 2026); proposed local ownership of medium-scale mining (Citi Newsroom, November 2026); revised mining bill (Mining Weekly, October 2026); ban on unrefined artisanal gold exports (BusinessDay, August 2026); GoldBod local refining (GNA, October 2026); Obuasi mine shutdown and redevelopment (Mining Technology); contract mining rules (Mining.com.au, April 2026); Chamber of Mines and UMaT research (GNA, May 2024); community mining research (GNA, June 2026).
Dr Adwoa Boaduo Pr.Eng.
Mining engineer with a BSc, MSc and PhD in Mining Engineering from Wits, and 16 years of hands-on experience in the mining industry.
