Your machines earn it in the pit. You lose it on the way to the office.
For a contractor, the gap is billable hours and fuel. For a full mine operator, it is cost per tonne. For a subcontractor, it is the work you can prove. The leak is the same one.
Darikoda is the operating record between what your machines did and what you can account for at month-end. Fuel events, hour-meter attribution, mechanical availability, cost per tonne. Captured at source.
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CFuel dispenses captured at source
Every litre logged at the machine with photo, GPS and shift. The fuel number can be trusted.
Fuel recovered
AGHS 18,420
Fuel variance exposure
BGHS 61,500
EX-22 coolant
C103 C
Health alerts open
C3
Fleet utilisation
C72%
Parts variance
B5%
EX-22 excavator
Health alertCCoolant climbed from 90 to 103 C across the shift. Three health alerts open on the asset.
Darikoda gives Ghana mining contractors and full miners defendable evidence on billable hours, fuel from the bowser, mechanical availability, and cost-per-tonne. Captured at source, structured for the Minerals Commission, built offline-first.
In 30 seconds
- Who it is for: Ghana mining contractors and full miners across the gold belt (Tarkwa, Obuasi, Damang), 3 or more heavy assets.
- What it protects: billable hours, fuel at the mine's bowser, cost per tonne, downtime.
- First step: a free 30-minute audit. One-page leakage map. You keep it either way.
Best fit: mining contractors and full operators where day-works hours, bowser fuel, mechanical availability or cost per tonne decide the margin.
Weak fit: very small crews where one person still verifies every hour, litre and tonne without month-end disputes.
Pick your specialisation
Which are you?
This vertical splits into specialisations. Pick the seat that matches yours. Each view is written for it, not adapted from a generic one.
Where mining margin leaks while the GM is busy on something else.
From Theo
Every mining contractor I sit with tells me the same thing. The fuel doesn't reconcile. The hour-meter readings don't match the mine's. The hired excavator is costing more than the owned fleet but you cannot prove it cleanly. The GM holds it together. You can feel the money walking out. You cannot point at it.
Hour-meters drift between fuel events. Engine-hour servicing gets pushed because parts are still on the road from Tema. Operators rotate across machines and the behavioural variance hides inside the team average: fuel burn, output per hour, machine care.
The GM holds it together by instinct. That works at three excavators. It breaks when fleet, operator pool, contract count, and reporting burden all grow at once. By the time the gap reaches the IPC, the dispute is already live.
Three roles. Three versions of the same gap.
Contractor, full mine operator, subcontractor. Different commercial structures, one gap between what the machines did and what you can account for.
What the mine measures, and what you can prove.
What you see
Your hour-meter log shows M-04 ran 9 hours yesterday.
What you don't
The mine's record shows 7. Two billable hours, in dispute, no defence.
What you see
Monthly diesel reconciles roughly against fleet hours.
What you don't
The 12% variance you cannot prove is wearing one operator's machine three times faster than the others.
What you see
The CAT excavator clocked 180 engine-hours this month.
What you don't
40 of them were idle, parked, engine running. Your contract gets billed on hours. The mine asks why the production matched 140.
What you see
Hired excavator invoice came in at GHS 84,000 this month.
What you don't
Per-tonne, it's costing you 73% more than the owned fleet equivalent. The renewal conversation has no per-asset evidence behind it.
What you see
Mantrac says the parts shipped Monday.
What you don't
The bowl float arrived Friday. Five productive days lost on a machine billing at USD 130/hour.
Every operator I have audited has a version of this story. The details vary. The shape does not.
The billed hour starts at the face.
Every hour you bill is an hour the mine's QS can challenge. The defence starts at the face: hour-meter, operator PIN, GPS.
ARCHETYPE 1 · LEAD SEGMENT
If you're a mining contractor.
You don't own the concession. You provide services to a mining client: crushing, hauling, drilling, road maintenance. Usually 3 to 15 heavy assets. Day-works billing or per-hour billing. Contract cycles 1 to 3 years.
What you care about
Defending billable hours
Day-works billing means hours equal revenue. Hour-meter readings need to be captured at events the client can verify, not reconstructed at month-end.
Fuel evidence at the mine's bowser
Where the mine stores and dispenses, your operator writes what was received. If your operator is absent, the mine's number becomes the default. One of your largest cost lines is weakly evidenced at source.
Hired vs owned cost visibility
A hired excavator's economics deserve a hard answer at renewal. Without per-asset operating cost, renew-or-replace is guesswork.
Servicing delays and parts lead times
Critical wear items from Tema with two-week lead times erase productive hours before the loss is visible in a month-end summary.
Mechanical availability the mining client can verify
Availability is your defence against client pressure. Without per-asset uptime evidence, the client's number wins the dispute.
Operator attribution
On self-operated sites, attribution activates per operator: fuel efficiency, output per hour, equipment care, the basis for coaching, recognition, and fair pay. Where machines are rented to subcontractors, the same per-machine attribution defends billable hours, defends fuel deductions, and protects asset condition even when the operator works for someone else.
Compliance
Minerals Commission certification, safety reporting, insurance records. All of it needs a defendable record trail.
Proof point
If even part of that walking margin comes home, the work has paid for itself. The audit produces the exact figure for your operation.
ARCHETYPE 2 · FULL MINER
If you run the mine.
You own the concession. You control the whole process: extraction, hauling, processing, royalty payments to the Minerals Commission. Small-scale formalised, mid-tier, or larger. The cost-per-tonne discipline is the difference between a mine that compounds margin and a mine that pays for idle assets.
What you care about
Cost-per-tonne
The golden metric. Per haul road, per truck, per shift, per operator. Live, not lagged.
Cost-per-ounce
After the new sliding-scale royalty regime. The royalty curve is steeper at high gold prices, which means avoidable operating leakage hurts more.
Stripping ratio visibility
The relationship between waste moved and ore exposed, tracked over time, with cost attribution.
Mechanical availability above 85%, physical above 90%, utilisation above 75%
The targets that separate a mine making money from a mine paying for idle assets.
Minerals Commission compliance
Under L.I. 2431 sixth edition (effective January 2025).
Fuel integrity
Across the full bowser-to-engine chain.
Tyre life on OTR tyres
Six per truck, USD 30-60K each, USD 180-360K per set. Attribution per operator, haul road, loading style is real money.
Proof point
If two haul trucks run the same route with the same load and one costs GHS 15/tonne and the other costs GHS 8/tonne, would you know? And what would you do?
ARCHETYPE 3 · MINING SUBCONTRACTOR
If you're a subcontractor.
Drilling crew, blast crew, water-bowser fleet, tyre service crew. Usually 1-5 assets. One layer below the contractor.
The proof point is simple: a defendable, time-stamped log of work done that you can hand to the contractor's QS at end-of-shift. No reconstruction. No memory dispute. The hours you worked are the hours that get billed.
Cost per tonne is decided before the weighbridge.
By the time the tonnes hit the weighbridge, the cost is already set by fuel, hauls and downtime no one tied to the truck.
02 / The platform · applied to mining
Three engines, applied to mining.
The same operating-record logic that runs underneath every Darikoda deployment, surfaced in mining's native vocabulary.
Cost-per-tonne, cost-per-ounce
The golden metrics. Per haul road, per truck, per shift, per operator. Visible the moment the work happens, not at month-end after the variance has disappeared into the ledger. At typical Ghana day-works rates of USD 130 to 138 per hour, per-asset cost evidence turns renew-or-replace from instinct into decision.
Mechanical and physical availability
85% mechanical, 90% physical, 75% utilisation: the targets that separate a mine making money from a mine paying for idle assets. Tracked per machine, not per fleet. The asset pulling the average down is named.
Fuel integrity at the bowser
The mine stores it. The mine dispenses it. Your operator writes what was received. When your operator is absent, the mine's number becomes the default. One of your largest cost lines, weakly evidenced. Structured capture that ties every dispense to the operator, machine and project behind it closes the gap. Five percent recovery on a USD 100,000 monthly diesel spend is USD 5,000 back to margin every month. One line item. (Illustrative model, your number from the audit.)
From Theo
Recover even part of what walks each month and the case makes itself. Five percent recovery on a USD 100,000 monthly diesel spend is USD 5,000 back to margin every month. One line item. (Illustrative model, your number from the audit.) The decision is not whether the leakage is happening. It's whether you want the evidence in your hands or the mine's.
The numbers are not uniform. On one mine I sat with, the leak was 8 percent on fuel, operator absent at the bowser, mine's number became default. On another it was day-works hours, two contested every shift, four hours of revenue gone each week. The audit is built to find which one is true for your operation.
Without the record, the loss just averages out.
One truck bleeding margin disappears into the fleet average, until the record splits it out by asset and shift.
Where the maths stops being abstract.
Defending billable hours
Old way
Operator's log says 9 hours. Mine's log says 7. The QS asks for proof. You have a notebook entry, no timestamp, no GPS, no operator PIN.
On Darikoda
M-04. 09:12 start. 18:23 stop. Operator Kwame PIN-attributed. GPS confirms position. 9.18 hours. The QS sees the same record you do.
Pays for itself
The recovered hours alone can cover the work. Your audit sets the real number.
Fuel at the mine's bowser
Old way
Operator absent for the fuel event. Mine writes 320L. Your monthly reconciliation shows the discrepancy, but it's three weeks late and the receipt is unsigned.
On Darikoda
320L dispense, logged at the event by the operator, with the pump reading and position captured as proof. If you challenge the number, you have the record.
USD 5K / month
5 percent recovery on a USD 100K monthly diesel spend, one line item. (Illustrative model, your number from the audit.)
The hired excavator renewal
Old way
The excavator costs GHS 84K/month to hire. Is it earning that back? The GM thinks yes. Finance thinks no. The renewal happens on instinct.
On Darikoda
Per-asset cost-per-tonne. 73% above the owned-fleet benchmark on the same route. The renewal conversation has a number behind it.
1 dashboard view
renew-or-replace decisions evidenced live, not reconstructed from three weeks of spreadsheet pulls.
Regulatory frame
L.I. 2431 and the regulatory frame.
Ghana's sixth-edition mining local procurement list, effective January 2025. Penalties up to USD 10,000 monthly for non-compliance. The framework shapes which categories of goods and services must come from Ghanaian-owned companies, and how mining contractors structure their supply chain. Source: Minerals Commission Sixth Edition Procurement List (PDF, January 2025).
From December 2026 the ownership rules tighten again. Surface mining must be carried out by Ghanaian-owned operators, and the core blasting, loading and hauling work is moving from foreign-owned operators to local contractors. For Ghanaian contractors that is a structural tailwind. For every operator it sharpens one question the audit answers: can your local-content and local-spend reporting survive the Minerals Commission's review without a month of reconstruction? Sources: CNBC Africa and The Assay. Regulatory deadline last reviewed 9 June 2026.
Honest disclosure: Darikoda Systems Ltd, the Ghana-registered company behind Darikoda, is backed by Ilori Streamline Ltd (UK). Where the regulations require it, we work alongside Ghana-registered partner engineering firms. Specifics, including category count and source-document caveats, are in the FAQ below.
Regulatory context last reviewed: 9 June 2026. Sources: Minerals Commission, Reuters, GhIE, Ministry of Finance Budget Statement.
The royalty return is only as strong as the field evidence.
Under the sliding-scale regime, the cost-per-tonne you report is only as defensible as the evidence behind it.
Sliding-scale royalty regime
Gold royalties rise as commodity prices rise. Operating leakage becomes harder to absorb.
Under Ghana's new sliding-scale royalty regime in force since March 2026, gold royalties rise as commodity prices rise. For mine owners and contractors, that makes avoidable operating leakage harder to absorb. Every cent of cost-per-ounce drift matters more when the royalty curve is steeper at high prices.
The cost-per-tonne and cost-per-ounce visibility Darikoda surfaces is the operational lens through which the royalty exposure becomes manageable.
Regulatory context last reviewed: 9 June 2026. Sources: Minerals Commission, Reuters, GhIE, Ministry of Finance Budget Statement.
Find where your tonnes and hours are leaking.
Free 30-minute audit on WhatsApp. A one-page leakage map for your fleet. You keep it either way.
Built so the record survives the pit.
- Every write at the pit edge or the bowser is saved on the spot and syncs when signal returns. Remote pits do not wait for connectivity.
- You can always see whether a field entry has reached the office yet. No more "did it go through?"
- Every action is attributed to a person, role, device, and time. No silent edits to history.
- Shared tablets use PIN-level worker attribution. No one is logged in as someone else.
- Failed syncs create visible issues, not silent gaps.
- Finance and operations see the same record. Your existing accounting or ERP gets fed the per-machine truth it cannot produce on its own.
The shift ends. The record does not.
The record holds from the pit edge to the month-end review.
Cross-vertical reach
Many mining contractors also rent equipment to subcontractors.
Charging by hours, supplying fuel, deducting both from the subcontractor's payment. If that's your model, the deduction-game framing applies directly. The same per-machine attribution defends billable hours to the mining client AND defends deductions from the subcontractor.
Mining-specific FAQ.
Common questions from mining contractors, full miners, and mining subcontractors.
Are you compliant with L.I. 2431?
Darikoda is a software product, built by Darikoda Systems Ltd (registered in Ghana) with Ilori Streamline Ltd (UK, Company No. 16378536) behind it. Where the Minerals and Mining Local Content Regulations require it, we work alongside Ghana-registered partner engineering firms. Ghana operating reality is the first context, not a localisation afterthought.
How many categories are on the L.I. 2431 procurement list?
The January 2025 sixth-edition document, published by the Minerals Commission, lists 52 reserved categories for Ghanaian-owned companies. Note: the Minerals Commission's live HTML procurement-list page may still show earlier editions (41 items in the fourth edition, 50 items in the fifth). When the live page is updated, we follow the latest Commission-published list. Source: Sixth Edition of the Procurement List, January 2025 (mincom.gov.gh PDF).
Do you replace OEM telematics like Cat Product Link or KOMTRAX?
No. Cat Product Link, KOMTRAX, VisionLink, Sky Ledge, and Introma do GPS, hour-meter telemetry, and machine-health alerts well. Darikoda is the operating record above that: the layer that ties machine hours to billable contracts, fuel events to invoiced cost, operator behaviour to per-asset performance, downtime to root cause. We integrate where useful. We do not replace the OEM stack.
Full comparison: Darikoda vs ERP, trackers and spreadsheetsWhat if our fleet is mixed-OEM?
Mixed fleets are the norm in Ghana. Darikoda is OEM-agnostic. The operating record is captured at the operational layer (operator, project, shift, fuel event, downtime cause) so the asset record is consistent whether the machine is a CAT, Volvo, Komatsu, or Hitachi. Telemetry integration where it exists is additive, not required.
What's the minimum fleet size where Darikoda makes sense?
For mining contractors with day-works billing, the maths can work from 3 heavy assets. For full miners running owned production fleet, the threshold is usually around 5-10 assets where the cost-per-tonne discipline starts to materially affect margin. The Operational Audit produces the specific number for your operation.
Can you handle offline / patchy 4G at remote pit sites?
Yes. Every field write saves locally first and syncs when signal returns. Operators don't wait for connectivity to record a fuel event, an hour-meter reading, or a fault report. Failed syncs become visible issues, not silent gaps. Sites with Starlink plus patchy 3G/4G are well within the operating envelope.
How long until we see results on fuel integrity?
Fuel variance becomes visible at source from the first week of structured fuel-event capture. The first month of data usually surfaces patterns the GM didn't have evidence for: a particular operator, a particular shift, a particular machine. The pattern is the value. What you do with it is the operational decision. Specific results depend on your current baseline and contract structure.
We're a mining subcontractor. Does Darikoda fit our scale?
Smaller subcontractors (drilling crew, blast crew, water-bowser fleet, tyre service crew, 1-5 assets) typically use Darikoda for one specific thing: a defendable, time-stamped log of work done that they can hand to the contractor's QS at end-of-shift. That's a tighter use-case than the full operating record we build for contractors and full miners, but the same architecture supports it.
How does Darikoda handle the new sliding-scale royalty regime?
Under Ghana's new sliding-scale royalty regime in force since March 2026, gold royalties rise as commodity prices rise. For mine owners and contractors, that makes avoidable operating leakage harder to absorb. Every cent of cost-per-ounce drift matters more when the royalty curve is steeper at high prices. The cost-per-tonne and cost-per-ounce visibility Darikoda surfaces is the operational lens through which the royalty exposure becomes manageable.
We rent equipment to other contractors on the mining site, is Darikoda a fit?
Yes. Many mining contractors also rent equipment to subcontractors on the mining client's site, charging by hours and supplying fuel against deduction. That's a substantial part of the operating model, and we built a dedicated page for it.
What does it cost?
There's a fixed-fee Build & Activation phase (configures the operating record to your operation), followed by an ongoing subscription once the pilot proves operational value. The Operational Audit produces the specific number for your fleet, book it through the audit page above.
From the Operating Notes
Field analysis that goes deeper on this.
- Mining · RegulatoryThe L.I. 2431 local-content return: an export if your record is clean, a scramble if it is not.
- Mining · RegulatoryGoldBod and traceability: the mine that can prove where every ounce came from wins.
- Fuel · Cross-verticalWhy fuel variance hides for three weeks, and what closes the gap at the bowser.
See where your mining operation leaks.
The Operational Audit takes 30 minutes. You get a one-page leakage report, mining-specific, that you keep regardless of next steps.
Patterns described here are drawn from extensive field audits and industry research across Ghana's mining, construction, roadworks, and quarry sectors. No specific operator is named or identifiable.