I worked for some years as the Health, Safety and Environment Manager at a large mine in East Africa that had 50 expatriate employees (some of them Ghanaian, but otherwise a mix of Australian, English, South African and French) and 2,500 local employees. I'm really struck by the misconceptions exemplified by the vitrolic comments of some of these armchair critics. This is particularly so when one talks about the flow of income into surrounding communities and in long-term training and professional development. Perhaps you could speak with some of the local people, especially those in professional and management positions, or for an independent view, perhaps the Ghanaian expatriates.

Just to give one example, while my professional background is in environmental science (and I could add comments about that), as Safety Manager I rigorously enforced the wearing of seat belts and this started a trend in the surrounding communities to do so. We set a record of 3.4million man hours "Lost time injury free", a statistic that many industries in developed countries would be proud to claim, and it was broken when a kitchen hand was seriously burned trying to light a BBQ at the celebration.