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Since November, Ghanaians have debated the Ewoyaa Lithium Mining Project Agreements signed between Government and Barari DV of Australia in October 2023. The debate has been intense and largely non-partisan.
Many organised bodies of citizens and prominent individuals have made public statements critical of the Ewoyaa Agreements and arguing against parliamentary ratification. A more popular discussion continues to rage on social media. It is clear is that there is massive public anxiety about this agreement. Key areas of concern are
summarised below.
Firstly, the Ewoyaa process has not been transparent. Citizens believe we were deliberately kept in the dark about Ghana’s potentially strategic lithium resources and Government’s dealings with Barari concerning prospecting and exploring at Ewoyaa. Government argues that the process was as transparent as that preceding any Government allocation of mining leases. Government will no doubt now argue that it is already contractually obligated by the logic of the Minerals and Mining Act to proceed with the Ewoyaa Agreements and that it is too late to mount a challenge. Government’s standard procedures are no longer acceptable to Ghanaians.
Secondly, the Ewoyaa terms are controversial. The public has protested specific operational, legal, technical, and financial terms of the Ewoyaa agreement. For example, citizens have expressed concerns about social and environmental assessments of the project and its impacts on the livelihoods of surrounding communities for example. Unfavourable comparisons have been made between the Ewoyaa fiscal package and fiscal packages in recent lithium mining agreements signed in other Global South countries. The Minister for Lands boasts that the Ewoyaa royalties are double that of royalties deriving from any other mining operating in Ghana or Africa.
Comparisons of single elements of fiscal packages of agreements such as royalty outside the total fiscal package (taxes, carried equity interests, additional equity, or product entitlements, financing, additional investment obligations, asset transfer obligations and similar commercial terms) are often not meaningful. SMG will not say more about the fiscal balance of the Ewoyaa Agreements without further information and analysis. We accept that not all those who have sought to explain the Ewoyaa fiscal regime to the public have been well-informed.
However, like most Ghanaians, SMG cannot accept the Government’s glib claims that these terms are the best available. We want to see a credible holistic analysis. Providing the public with this is Government’s fiduciary responsibility. It cannot rely simply on apparent flaws in some of its critics’ arguments to silence them. Government must provide its model for scrutiny.
Thirdly (and perhaps an extension of the last point), it is increasingly evident that Ghana, unlike other Global South lithium resource holders, has not leveraged its new resources to position itself to participate optimally in the coming green energy economy. Ghana has not ensured that the Ewoyaa investors can and will deliver “downstream” development, such as the manufacturing of Batteries or Electrical Vehicles. We cannot explain this glaring lapse. Perhaps Minerals Commission and the Ministry for Lands and Forestry lack vision. Perhaps they lack capacity. Perhaps the Government’s thinking is not sufficiently “joined up” (after all, the Government, in the middle of the Ewoyaa controversy, announced an EV policy in its 2024 Budget). Perhaps, officials are deliberately hoodwinking Ghanaians to reap short-term fiscal or private gains from a sweetheart deal with the investors. There is only one way to find out.
SMG therefore endorses calls for Government to suspend the processing of the Ewoyaa Agreements pending a thorough review. We caution, however, that what is needed is not a superficial “technical” review of the Ewoyaa agreements by a handful of “experts”. Nor is this just a partisan contest that can be entrusted to a Parliamentary Select Committee and end with petty victories for either NPP or NDC and, most likely, a stitch-up.
The character and scope of the questions raised require a complete review of our extractive sectors in the context of a framework (at least) a national development plan. Fundamental questions about the respective roles in extractives (and, by extension, the entire economy) of foreign investors, indigenous investors, indigenous professionals, the State, and the mobilised Ghanaian public have been raised. They must be answered. Questions have been asked about the role of Transnational Banks in determining the structure of mining and oil and gas agreements. These, too, must be answered. Others have questioned the role of the World Bank and IMF and the donor agencies in framing economic policy in Ghana. These questions must be answered. There will be pushback.
When many of the elite and partisan forces screaming about self-reliance and competence wake up to the fact that they are threatening the sources of their privilege, they will move to reign in the debate and protect the dysfunctional status quo.
Ghana has no time now for tinkering. Ghana is teetering on the brink of socio-economic collapse. Neo-liberalism and all its institutions are on trial. Our situation requires direct engagement amongst the representatives of our society’s different socio-economic classes.
We are especially concerned that working people are fully and independently represented in any such process.
Working people must be at the table to defend their interests and lead in finding a solution to this crisis. For this to happen, working people must have an internal process for exploring these issues and defining their class interest in the extractives sector. SMG is happy to work with Organised Labour to develop positions that inform a restructuring of our extractives sector.
Until a national process of the sort described has been completed Government should not present the Ewoyaa Agreements to Parliament for ratification. If it does, Parliament should withhold ratification. Indeed Government should halt negotiation of all new extractive agreements pending conclusion of this Review.
Long Live the Working People of Ghana!
Huzaif Badar Ibrahim
for General Secretary
+233 (0) 55 822 9883
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