By Gyinadu Abubakar and Evans Odoom / Shaping Sustainable Futures conference series
From Cocoa to Gold: What’s at Stake
When classical agrarian theory points to rising food prices as the driver of land value, it assumes a single, agricultural use for land. David Ricardo’s rent model is a good example: more demand for corn raises the returns to fertile land and—because the soil’s productive capacity is essentially fixed—landowners capture higher rents. But in many contemporary rural landscapes this model misses a crucial detail: land is multi‑functional. Productive cocoa farms in Ghana—particularly in the Western North, Ashanti, Bono, and Eastern regions—sit atop significant gold deposits, creating a conflict between agriculture and mining.
When the alternative returns from gold mining exceed those from cocoa, farmers who face high production costs, price risk, and liquidity constraints will rationally switch land use, selling their land or allowing informal miners onto their plots. In short, it is demand for gold, not corn or cocoa, that is reshaping land values and livelihoods.
Mining’s pull is understandable. Artisanal and small‑scale mining provides upfront cash that is attractive to liquidity‑constrained households. It also offers employment to idle rural youth, raising the opportunity cost of farm labour and contributing to labour shortages during critical periods of the rainy season. But these short‑term gains come with severe long‑term costs. Unregulated mining degrades soil productivity, pollutes rivers with toxic contaminants, damages biodiversity and public health, and destroys the very asset base—fertile land—that sustained rural livelihoods. Stories from affected communities include declines in crop yields, infertility of formerly productive plots and alarming health outcomes in nearby communities.
The problem is not just environmental damage; it is a broken transition pathway. Numerous restoration initiatives have attempted to reclaim mined land, but most fail to prevent miners from returning to extractive activities or to transition them into viable agricultural livelihoods. Many projects are short‑term, under‑licensed and disconnected from the communities they aim to serve. To restore agrarian economies—and restore hope—restoration must be coupled with durable livelihood transitions, community ownership and market‑driven farming systems.
GetCare’s RECLAIM Project: restoring land, restoring livelihoods
GetCare Foundation’s RECLAIM Project approaches this challenge with a combined technical and social strategy we call the Rural Economic Transition Systems (RETS) framework. RETS aims to restore degraded land to productive capacity while replacing the short‑term income miners obtain from illegal activity with sustainable, agriculture‑based livelihoods. The approach has several core components:
- Land reclamation and restoration: Rehabilitating mined soils using best‑practice reclamation techniques, regrading, phytoremediation and re‑establishment of soil structure so the land becomes agriculturally productive again.
- Livelihood transition for miners: Rather than leaving miners to their own devices, actively recruiting them into productive alternatives – farming, agroforestry and off‑farm enterprises – paired with training, inputs and start‑up support. This reduces the likelihood of recidivism to illegal mining.
- Climate‑smart, market‑led agriculture: Promoting cocoa and diversified cropping systems that are resilient to climate variability, reduce input costs through agroecological methods and link producers to markets (including value chains that reward quality).
- Smart irrigation and technology investments: Installing or demonstrating scalable irrigation technologies and digital tools so that new farmers can manage risk and raise yields even in marginal conditions.
- Agroforestry and carbon finance: Integrating tree crops and cocoa agroforestry systems that restore soil health, sequester carbon and open potential revenue streams through carbon credits—making restored farms more profitable over time.
- Community resource governance: Working with chiefs, community members, local authorities and government agencies to establish community resource management areas in which benefits and decision‑making are shared. This local ownership model reduces incentives for illegal mining and improves long‑term stewardship.
- Blended finance and transition incentives: Structuring the project through a mix of grants, private capital, carbon finance, and market revenues, alongside targeted transition incentives and input support to enable miners and farmers to shift sustainably into alternative livelihoods.
- Institutional and policy integration: Aligning with national and local regulatory frameworks, including engagement with relevant government agencies and traditional authorities, to ensure legal compliance, secure land tenure arrangements, and enable scalability beyond pilot communities.
- Structured market linkages and offtake systems: Establishing reliable market access through partnerships with buyers and value chain actors, ensuring demand for produce, price stability, and long-term commercial viability for participating farmers.
Lessons learned and adjustments
As explained above, experience shows that reclamation without social transition is ineffective. Short‑term projects without sustainability planning merely displace problems. Licensing and regulatory compliance also matter: projects operating without buy‑in from the Environmental Protection Authority and Forestry Commission are undermined from the start. GetCare’s current design explicitly integrates these lessons: every reclamation plan follows national licensing requirements and is developed in consultation with statutory bodies and the communities themselve
We also found that land access is a major barrier for young people entering cocoa farming. The average cocoa farmer is aging; the sector needs youth to sustain its future. RECLAIM provides pathways for youth (including displaced miners, women and people with disabilities) to gain secure access to land through community‑held resource models and targeted inclusion measures.
Why this is bankable and why donors should care
Environmental restoration is expensive, but the benefits are substantial and measurable. The FAO estimates benefit‑cost ratios for restoration projects ranging from 7:1 to 30:1, depending on context and the suite of ecosystem services recovered.Beyond returns in agricultural productivity, community health improvements, water quality, biodiversity and avoided land loss translate into social returns that traditional accounting often misses.
Moreover, by aligning reclamation with market‑oriented farming—cocoa quality upgrading, carbon markets, irrigation improvements and links to local and international buyers—these projects can generate predictable revenue streams that appeal to development donors, impact investors and corporate actors in the mining and cocoa sectors.
A call for partnership
If we are to scale reclamation and durable livelihood transitions across mining‑affected landscapes, we need strategic partners: donor agencies willing to fund long‑term restoration, academic institutions to measure impacts and refine approaches, private sector actors (including responsible mining companies) to integrate RECLAIM and RETS into their operations, and local institutions to anchor governance and benefit‑sharing.
We invite collaboration. GetCare Foundation seeks partners to support pilot scaling, rigorous monitoring and the design of blended finance instruments that make reclamation projects investable. If you are a donor, researcher, practitioner or company interested in supporting sustainable transitions in Ghana’s cocoa‑mining landscapes, please get in touch. (Contact: Evans Odoom www.getcarefoundation.org|, odoom.evans@getcarefoundation.org)
Reversing agrarian change is not simply an environmental task; it is a social and economic one. By restoring degraded soils, creating inclusive pathways into farming and embedding local governance and market linkages, we can make farming attractive again and secure the future of rural Ghanaian communities. With coordinated action, the same land that once drew people to gold can once again sustain families and livelihoods for generations.
Dr. Gyinadu Abubakar is an accomplished agricultural economist and development researcher with over a decade of experience in applied research, policy analysis, and evidence generation across Ghana’s agrifood and natural resource sectors. His expertise spans econometric modeling, political economy analysis, impact evaluation, survey design, evidence synthesis, and agricultural innovation systems—positioning him as a leading voice in data-driven rural development.
Evans Odoom is a development management leader dedicated to advancing sustainable and regenerative solutions that strengthen communities and improve human well-being. As the Founder and CEO of GetCare Foundation, he leads the design and implementation of programs and projects that promote food security, ecological restoration, natural resources management, and resilient local economies.
Tropenbos International Ghana and our team are preparing a journal article on land restoration in sub‑Saharan Africa — stay tuned for updates.
The related research will be presented at Seed Panel 24 at the 2026 EADI/IOB Conference
Image: by the authors
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of the EADI Debating Development Blog or the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes