Ghana must act swiftly and strategically to harness its lithium potential or risk watching the prized mineral lose its value to fast-paced global innovation.
This is a caution from the Country Manager of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Denis Gyeyir, who warns that lithium’s current relevance in battery production and clean energy technology is no longer guaranteed as the resource is at risk of becoming a “stranded asset.”
Stranded assets are resources that lose value prematurely due to market shifts, regulations, or innovations.
Speaking on the evolving nature of resource value in an exclusive interview with The High Street Journal, Denis Gyeyir offered a stark reminder that “Resources do change. The nature of their usefulness changes.”
Drawing reference from South Africa, he recounted that, “Many years ago, diamonds were used to catapult birds in South Africa. Today, they’re in high demand.” He explained that a resource can just become useful overnight, or become less useful because of new technologies or discoveries.
Lithium, often called “white gold” for its critical role in electric vehicle (EV) batteries, has become a cornerstone of global decarbonization efforts. Ghana’s discovery of significant lithium reserves at Ewoyaa has sparked national excitement, with policymakers eyeing it as a potential game-changer for the country’s green industrialization drive.
But the country manager’s comments cast a long shadow over this optimism. He revealed that there are ongoing research on alternative battery technologies that could displace lithium altogether. Scientists, he says, are currently working on innovation that could use salt to generate batteries.
He noted that if those breakthroughs happen in the future, lithium could become less useful, not entirely useless, but less useful to the extent that the price will come down significantly.
“For the whole lithium discussion, not just in Ghana but globally, it could become worthless as a result of innovation. Resources do change. The nature of the usefulness of resources changes. A resource can just become useful overnight because of some new technology or discoveries around its usefulness. They can also be competing discoveries,” he indicated.
He continued that, “for instance, there’s advanced work going on how to use salt to manufacture batteries. And if those breakthroughs happen in the future, lithium could become less useful. Maybe not completely useless, but less useful to the extent that the price will also come down significantly even further. And so, we must be mindful of that. And there’s huge competition in the innovation market.”
Unlike gold whose intrinsic value and market demand remain relatively stable, the resource economist noted that lithium’s usefulness is tied directly to rapidly evolving technologies and fierce competition in innovation.
“It is not like gold, where you just leave it under the ground. Even if they don’t come to mine, it will be there for us in the future. There is no assurance that you can use lithium in the future,” he warned.
This caution emphasizes the need for Ghana to finalize investment and regulatory frameworks for lithium extraction, ensure transparency in licensing, and swiftly develop domestic value-addition strategies before the market shifts.
