Ghana’s rivers once fed farms, carried trade, and threaded life through every region of the nation. The Restore Ghana Project exists to return them to that role, and to the generations that depend on them.
For more than a decade, illegal small‑scale mining, known across Ghana as galamsey, has poured silt, heavy metals, and mining debris into the nation’s greatest rivers. Waters that once ran clear now run brown; channels that carried canoes, fish, and commerce stand choked and stagnant. The damage reaches from the riverbed to the national balance sheet, contaminating drinking water, flooding communities, and dismantling the livelihoods of fishermen and farmers.
The Restore Ghana Project (RGP) is the national answer. Conceived in 2022 and executed by DIHOC DENZEL GHANA LIMITED, a special purpose vehicle joining the Defence Industries Holding Company (DIHOC) Limited with Denzel Logistics Limited, it is an industrial environmental remediation programme of unprecedented scale: a $200 million commitment to dredge, engineer, and revive Ghana’s major river bodies.
But RGP is more than dredging. Every restored channel is paired with lasting economic interventions, sustainable aquaculture, eco‑tourism, irrigation‑based agriculture, and riverine transport, so that clean water becomes enduring prosperity for the communities that depend on it.
The mandate covers every water body in Ghana affected by illegal mining. Operations begin where the wounds are deepest, in the priority basins of the River Offin, the River Pra, and the River Ankobra, and unfold in five disciplined phases: beginning with environmental and social impact assessments and a pilot operation on the River Offin, then extending nationwide to every affected river, lake, and stream, with permanent monitoring, maintenance, and community stewardship.
The mandate extends to every affected water body in Ghana, and it begins here. The Offin, the Pra, and the Ankobra together drain the gold‑bearing heartlands of the Ashanti, Central, and Western regions, the very geography where galamsey has struck hardest. Restoring them first, from the Offin pilot outward, rehabilitates an entire hydrological system that empties into the Gulf of Guinea, and proves the model the national rollout will follow.
Rising in the Ashanti highlands and joining the Pra below Dunkwa‑on‑Offin, the Offin runs through the historic heart of Ghana’s gold country, and has paid the heaviest price for it. RGP’s 90‑day pilot dredging programme begins here, restoring channel depth and producing the impact report that guides the full national rollout.
The largest river of southwestern Ghana, the Pra gathers the Offin, Anum, and Birim before reaching the sea at Shama. Its basin feeds water treatment plants, farms, and fisheries serving millions, making its rehabilitation the programme’s central objective once the pilot proves the method.
Winding through the rainforests of the Western Region to the Atlantic near Axim, the Ankobra once carried boats deep inland. Decades of mining waste have choked its course; RGP’s restoration will reopen the channel, revive coastal fisheries, and return safe water to riverside communities.
Remove silt and sediment pollution from affected river bodies.
Prevent further degradation and support long‑term river maintenance.
Enhance socio‑economic opportunities through revived fishing, irrigation, ecotourism and coastal transportation.
Strengthen national water security and conservation efforts.
