Ghana's Oxide Gold Belt And The Low-Capex Gold Model

By Patricia Miller

May 18, 2026

4 min read

Gold Fields, Newmont, and Equinox Gold (merging with Orla Mining) highlight the oxide gold model as a small-cap explorer targets the same playbook in Ghana.

Gold bull markets reward projects that can move from discovery toward cash flow without billion-dollar capital expenditure (capex). That has consistently favored near-surface oxide deposits, which are softer, shallower, and often amenable to heap leach processing (a low-cost method of recovering gold by trickling cyanide solution through stacked ore). Gold Fields Limited (NYSE: GFI), Newmont Corporation (NYSE: NEM), and Equinox Gold Corp. (NYSE American: EQX) all illustrate that pathway at scale, and Hamak Strategy Limited (LSE: HAMA) (OTCQB: HASTF) is now drilling a similar style of target in Ghana.

#The Oxide Development Model

Oxide ore avoids the expensive processing plants needed for refractory sulfide ore, which means lower upfront cost, faster permitting, and quicker construction, provided the deposit has the size and grade to justify it. West Africa and the Americas have produced several oxide success stories on this template. Gold Fields, Newmont, and Equinox sit at different points along that curve, from new production in Ghana to established heap leach operations in the Americas, offering useful reference points for how oxide projects convert into ounces and cash flow.

Hamak Strategy (LSE: HAMA) (OTCQB: HASTF) is targeting that same model at an earlier stage. The company holds an exclusive option on the Akoko gold project in Ghana's Ashanti greenstone belt, roughly 25 km south of Gold Fields' Tarkwa mine. Historical work has outlined more than 250,000 ounces of gold mineralization, calculated before modern reporting standards (non-JORC) were applied. Hamak’s first four assays from a planned 72-hole, 4,125-meter reverse circulation drilling program returned 29.53 g/t gold over 4 meters from 13 meters down-hole, consistent with the high-grade near-surface oxide thesis the company is testing. The program is designed to underpin a future JORC-compliant resource and a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA).

Gold Fields Limited (NYSE: GFI) operates the Tarkwa open-pit mine roughly 25 km from Akoko and is one of the largest gold operations in Ghana. Tarkwa is a large-scale open-pit operation with significant heap leach output, working near-surface oxide and weathered ores1. The company reported full-year 2025 attributable production of 2.44 million ounces, at the top end of its 2.25 to 2.45 million ounce guidance2. Ghana contributed 515,000 attributable ounces across Tarkwa and the nearby Damang mine3. Tarkwa is currently working through a multi-year waste-stripping program, which is the heavy work of removing overlying rock to access fresh ore. Gold Fields' continued reinvestment in Tarkwa underscores the productive geology of the Tarkwa Basin, the same belt that hosts Akoko 25 km to the south.

Newmont Corporation (NYSE: NEM) is the world's largest gold producer and operates two mines in Ghana following the sale of its Akyem mine in April 2025. Its Ahafo North project is a standalone operation built around a series of shallow open pits, with a processing plant designed to handle around 3.4 million tonnes of ore per year, rising to 3.7 million when treating softer oxide material4. Ahafo North is a textbook example of the oxide-first approach. The mine works weathered near-surface rock where the gold is easy to recover, which keeps upfront costs lower and brings cash flow forward compared with deeper, harder-to-process sulfide deposits. Commercial production started in late 2025, with 2026 set to be its first full year5. Newmont expects output of 275,000 to 325,000 ounces of gold per year over an initial 13-year mine life6. The decision to build Ahafo North represents a multi-billion-dollar commitment by a major producer to Ghanaian gold, confirming the country's credibility at scale. Ahafo North shows what the oxide model looks like when a producer reaches steady-state cash flow, the end of the development arc that earlier-stage projects in the same belt are working toward.

Equinox Gold Corp. (NYSE American: EQX) produced a record 922,827 ounces in 20257. On May 13, 2026 the company announced an at-market merger with Orla Mining (TSX: OLA) (NYSE American: ORLA) to create a senior North American gold producer with combined 2026 production of around 1.1 million ounces and a stated path to more than 1.9 million ounces8. That growth pipeline is built around open-pit oxide and heap leach projects including Castle Mountain in California, South Railroad in Nevada, and Camino Rojo in Mexico, alongside the Valentine Phase 2 expansion in Newfoundland. Equinox's portfolio sits outside West Africa, but the merger underscores how a senior producer is using the same open-pit, heap leach oxide template to grow production at scale.

Gold Fields, Newmont, and Equinox have each turned oxide gold into long-life, cash-generating operations. Hamak is drilling the early-stage version of that same template, on the same belt as Tarkwa, with the first assays already pointing at near-surface high-grade material9. Whether it converts into a resource, and then into a development decision, is the question the current drill program is designed to answer.

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