Ghana Gold Intelligence: Sammy Gyamfi, CEO of GoldBod — Ghana's National Gold Traceability System

Speaking on JoyNews' Beyond the Numbers on 10 August 2026, GoldBod CEO Sammy Gyamfi said Ghana was moving through a national competitive tender to acquire a gold traceability system that would ultimately enable GoldBod to trace gold purchases back to their mine of origin. Setting out the current procurement status, Gyamfi said: "twenty-seven companies bid for the contract, we're done with the technical evaluation, we are down to about seventeen companies, we are going on to the financial proposal to evaluate that, and then we'll be awarded... and then that is just the first part, because now you have a system that can trace every gram of gold that GoldBod purchases and sells to its mine of origin."

Ghana Gold Intelligence | Analysis by Joe-William Ohene-Frimpong

Gyamfi's remarks set out two distinct points. They confirm where procurement of the technology-backed system stood as of the interview — technical evaluation completed, financial evaluation and award still ahead. And they set out GoldBod's intended end capability: connecting a GoldBod purchase to a documented mine of origin. GoldBod Deputy CEO Richard Nunekpeku added detail on 20 August 2026, explaining that stakeholder consultations had informed the technical specifications and procurement framework for the proposed system, and describing it as intended to track gold "from the point where it is mined through the supply chain until it reaches GoldBod."

GoldBod does not buy gold directly from miners. In a formal clarification issued in January 2026, the Board stated explicitly that "the GoldBod, as a public corporation, does not buy gold directly from miners. Rather, the GoldBod buys gold from its licensed aggregators." The traceability system's stated purpose is to strengthen the evidentiary link between a purchase made through that licensed intermediary and the mine or production site further upstream — not to establish a direct purchasing relationship between GoldBod and individual mine sites, which does not exist under the current arrangement.

The Statutory and Institutional Foundation

GoldBod's mandate for this work rests on specific statutory provisions. Section 3(1)(f) of the Ghana Gold Board Act, 2025 (Act 1140) directs the Board to promote the formalisation of small-scale mining through responsible sourcing, sustainable supply chains, gold traceability and compliance with international standards; Section 3(1)(g) adds a mandate to support environmentally responsible mining practices. GoldBod has cited both provisions directly in its own public communications on this issue. Ghana's 2026 Budget Statement and Economic Policy separately records the Government's stated intention for GoldBod to roll out a comprehensive gold traceability system in 2026, with purchased gold expected to be traceable to a verified, licensed and environmentally compliant source.

The Existing Information Layer

GoldBod's current Responsible Sourcing and Supply Chain Sustainability Policy already establishes a set of institutional controls that predate, and are distinct from, the new procurement: onboarding and know-your-customer checks for suppliers and aggregators, documentation and, where applicable, on-site verification, risk classification of sources, unique identification of suppliers and gold lots, ongoing monitoring, and record retention. These are established controls under GoldBod's current policy framework, rather than future capabilities, and the traceability system now under procurement does not replace them. The Bank of Ghana's earlier Responsible Gold Sourcing Policy Framework, published in connection with its Domestic Gold Purchase Programme, established comparable due-diligence expectations for that programme specifically.

What these existing controls have not, on the public record, provided is a dedicated technology infrastructure connecting an individual purchase to a verified chain running back through the aggregator to a specific, documented mine of origin at national scale. That is the additional function the system now under procurement — the Traceability and Assurance System (TAS), reference GR/GGB/TS/RT/042/2026 — is designed to add.

It is also worth noting, for chronological precision, that GoldBod's own January 2026 clarification described the system then in development as "blockchain-based." Neither the April 2026 procurement announcement nor Gyamfi's and Nunekpeku's August 2026 statements repeat that characterisation. Whether the technology ultimately specified in the current procurement retains a blockchain architecture is not established by the more recent primary sources, and should not be assumed from the earlier description.

The procurement record has since developed further. At the time of Gyamfi's 10 August interview, the process had reached financial evaluation. GoldBod described the process as advanced on 20 August and said a pilot would follow successful completion of procurement. The current GHANEPS record for the TAS procurement lists the tender as "Suspended" and shows no award date.

Mapping the Value Chain

A related but separate GoldBod initiative addresses a different question. On 10 August 2026 — the same day as the JoyNews interview — Gyamfi disclosed that the Board had begun compiling and analysing data on how gold moves through the value chain generally, "from extraction sites to local buyers, refineries, and export markets." This value-chain mapping exercise is concerned with the structure of the market: which sites, buying points, aggregators, refineries and export routes exist, and in what volumes gold moves between them.

Traceability, as GoldBod describes the system now in procurement, is designed to answer a different question: can a specific gold purchase or lot be connected to a documented source of origin and relevant custody information. Mapping characterises the system as a whole; traceability, if implemented as specified, would characterise an individual transaction within it. GoldBod's public statements do not merge these two initiatives, and this article does not either.

From GoldBod Purchase to Mine of Origin

The intended information chain runs from a mine or production site, through a licensed aggregator, to a GoldBod purchase — with the system's intended function being to attach documented origin and relevant production information to that purchase, rather than to reconstruct it after the fact. GoldBod's stated interest in that information, per Gyamfi's August remarks, includes licensing status, production method, and specific risk indicators — mercury use and child labour.

Whether these questions become reliably addressable at the level of an individual transaction depends on factors the current record does not resolve: how rigorously origin data is verified at the point of aggregation, how consistently it is maintained as gold moves toward GoldBod, and how the new system interfaces with the due-diligence steps GoldBod's existing Responsible Sourcing Policy already requires of aggregators. The procurement establishes an intended capability. It does not yet establish an operating one.

The International Evidence Chain

The relevance extends to downstream due-diligence frameworks in which origin, supplier and chain-of-custody information form part of the evidence used to assess responsible gold supply chains. The OECD provides the underlying due-diligence framework; the LBMA applies responsible-sourcing requirements to refiners on its Good Delivery List; and the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation imposes due-diligence obligations on covered EU importers of gold and other designated minerals.

None of these frameworks is administered by GoldBod, and none would be automatically satisfied by the existence of a national tracking system. Gyamfi has described formalising sources so that they are "OECD compliant" and can secure "LBMA market access" as an objective of the traceability effort; this is his stated aim, not an established outcome or an independent GGI assessment of compliance. A functioning system would not, by itself, make Ghanaian gold OECD-compliant, LBMA-compliant, or guarantee EU market access; compliance under each framework depends on criteria and verification processes those bodies administer independently. What a functioning system could do is supply refiners, international buyers and financial institutions applying these frameworks with a more consistent, verifiable evidentiary basis than a purely aggregator-level record currently provides — provided the underlying data is accurate and consistently maintained.

What Changes if the System Works

The procurement remains unresolved in the public record. The current GHANEPS record lists the TAS tender as "Suspended" and shows no award date. Any subsequent pilot and rollout therefore remain contingent on the procurement process and the implementation arrangements that follow it.

That shift would depend, in practice, on the quality and completeness of the underlying data, on consistent verification at the aggregator level, on continuity of records as gold moves through the chain, and on institutional adoption across GoldBod's licensed buyer network. Technology alone would not establish these conditions; it would provide the infrastructure through which they could be met, if the surrounding institutional practice supports it.

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Ghana Gold Intelligence conducts independent, publicly sourced research into specific questions across Ghana's gold economy — institutional architecture, regulatory change, market access, offtake, supply chains, refining, financial exposure and project conditions. Engagements are individually scoped and delivered as confidential written analysis.