As Ghana prepares to become a major producer of lithium, concerns are growing that the country could squander another opportunity to transform its mineral wealth into broad-based economic development unless longstanding weaknesses in the governance of mining revenues and local procurement are addressed.
That warning came from energy policy expert and Co-Chair of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), Dr. Steve Manteaw, who has challenged the media and civil society organisations to shift their attention beyond exposing corruption to investigating how Ghana’s share of mining benefits is actually being utilised.
Speaking at a Media and Civil Society Capacity Building Workshop on Corruption Risks in Ghana’s Lithium Sector, organised by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Dr. Manteaw said the country’s experience with gold mining offers important lessons as commercial lithium production at Ewoyaa approaches.
“What are we doing to ensure that it does not repeat itself in Ewoyaa? That’s the challenge,” he said.
According to him, successive Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) reports have exposed persistent weaknesses in the management of mining revenues at the local level, with some mineral royalties being diverted into expenditures that do little to promote long-term development.
“In fact, there were instances where community shares of mineral royalties were spent as funeral donations in the Wassa area. That’s money for development being diverted into unproductive things,” he stated.
For Dr. Manteaw, the issue is not simply how much revenue Ghana earns from its natural resources but whether those revenues are invested in ways that create lasting economic opportunities.
“Otherwise, we’ll come and talk about it, lament, and go back. There are advocacy issues, and these are the issues the media must actually pay attention to,” he said.
Beyond Revenue Collection
While debates around mining often focus on taxes and royalties, Dr. Manteaw argued that Ghana has paid insufficient attention to how those revenues are spent after they reach local authorities.
He cited the example of mining communities where district assemblies routinely use community mineral royalties to finance activities that should ordinarily be funded through other internally generated revenues.
“The assemblies will tell you there are guidelines for all funds that come into the assembly, but there are no guidelines for mineral royalties,” he observed.
“As elections approach and names are being recorded, those are the funds used to procure canopies. When the President is coming to the district, that’s what is used to fund logistics.”
He noted that sanitation also consumes a significant share of mineral royalties even though assemblies already have the mandate to finance sanitation through property rates.
“If you look at the typical spending of the community share of benefits, the bulk of it goes into sanitation, when the assemblies are required to collect property rates for that purpose. This is abuse, completely,” he said.
According to him, unless Ghana strengthens accountability over the use of mineral revenues, the transition from gold to lithium is unlikely to produce different development outcomes.
The Bigger Economic Opportunity
Dr. Manteaw argued that an even larger opportunity lies outside government tax receipts.
“The biggest chunk of mining benefits is not in taxes,” he said. “One-third of the total benefit, typical spending of a mining company, is procurement.”
He explained that Ghana introduced Local Procurement Lists covering 56 categories of goods and services that mining companies are expected to source locally to stimulate domestic enterprise development and create employment.
However, he said the policy is failing to generate the intended economic impact.
“When Ghanaians get the contract, they go to China, undermining the rationale,” he noted.
“The rationale is that beyond manufacturing capability, Ghanaians should supply the industry. Instead, they import what is needed, deliver it and simply make their profits.”
The consequence, he argued, is that mining remains poorly integrated into the broader economy.
“Our mineral sector is not in any way linked to the economy—not the local economy, not the national economy,” he said.
“And if we continue like this, there is no way we will see any change.”
Lessons for Lithium
With Ghana positioning lithium as a strategic mineral for the global energy transition, Dr. Manteaw said policymakers must avoid repeating governance failures that have characterised decades of gold mining.
He stressed that success should not be measured solely by export earnings or government revenues but by whether mining creates sustainable local businesses, jobs, infrastructure and industrial development.
He pointed to investments undertaken by some mining companies themselves, noting that they often contrast sharply with how public mining revenues are utilised.
“We talk about the fact that Gold Fields has not done anything at Tarkwa, but they worked on the asphalt road from Damang to Tarkwa. After paying all their taxes, they did that road. What did we do with our share of the benefits?” he asked.
“We may not extend their stay. We may turn it over to Ghanaians. But nothing will change. If we continue to abuse our share of the benefits, nothing will change. We should blame ourselves for our own failures.”
A Call for Accountability
Dr. Manteaw urged journalists and civil society organisations to focus more attention on investigating how mining revenues are managed and whether procurement policies are delivering genuine local economic value.
Rather than limiting reporting to mining contracts and royalty payments, he said greater scrutiny is needed on how local authorities invest resource revenues and whether procurement systems are creating domestic industries.
“What are the advocacy issues that the media and CSOs should focus attention on?” he asked.
“When we leave here, I want to pick up a newspaper and read about why Ghana is not like Johannesburg, which is our failures as a country. We are not minded to optimise the benefits and translate these benefits into lasting opportunities for our people.”
His remarks come as Ghana seeks to position its emerging lithium industry as a catalyst for industrialisation under the global energy transition, raising broader questions about whether the country’s newest mineral resource will generate a different development story from the one written by more than a century of gold mining.
