Ghana is making a decisive statement about who should profit from its natural resources. The government is restricting the sale of Gold Fields’ Damang gold mine exclusively to companies that are 100% owned by Ghanaian citizens—a significant escalation of the country’s resource nationalism agenda. Gold Fields lost its lease renewal last year and must hand over the asset on April 18, following a 12-month extension requiring transition to local ownership. The eventual buyer will need open-pit mining expertise, a decade-long operational capacity, and access to over $500 million in development funding—a formidable bar for local firms. Ghana’s push mirrors similar moves across Africa, from Mali to Zimbabwe, as governments demand a larger slice of revenues from their own mineral wealth.
Bloomberg
