Ghana: The Lithium Interview

I was ushered into Ghana’s seat of government, the Flagstaff House, after passing through three serious checkpoints, after which two sniffer dogs performed their duties diligently. And a young navy officer in a smart uniform patted me down with more thoroughness than the Minerals Commission ever showed with the lithium contract they recently signed.

The reception hall of the presidential palace at Kanda (built with an Indian loan, I should add. To cap it, it’s as ugly as hell. It must be among the ugliest presidential palaces. Let’s rub it in while we are at it. Why not?) alone could swallow my entire compound in Kasoa. Italian marble underfoot, a chandelier the size of a Boeing 747 overhead, and framed portraits of past presidents looking down at me with the collective disapproval of men who also, in their season, signed one or two curious agreements.

A heavily-buxomed beautiful Northern Star led me to a waiting room stocked with expensive bling bling and bottled water flown in, I am reliably informed, from some Scandinavian spa.

There I sat until the spokesman, Nana Kwame Boadu, resplendent in a fine, expensive kente that would undoubtedly cost more than two years of my house rent, swept in with two aides (a beautiful, model-looking lady and a special-forces-looking male). A scent of expensive cologne announced him a full corridor before his voice did.

Welcome, Femi. He said curtly.
Good afternoon, Nana. Thank you for receiving me.

Sit, sit. You have exactly twelve minutes. I have a cabinet meeting to attend. Nana cut me short peremptorily. I was not amused. I decided to aggravate him.

I told him: Twelve minutes is more time than your government had to read the lithium contract before Parliament ratified it. I will take it gladly, Nana. The Ewoyaa lease royalty rate went from 10% to 5% between the first draft and the final signature. Who exactly performed that surgery, and were they paid in cedis or in a more stable currency?

He shot back. The global lithium price collapsed, and the terms were adjusted accordingly. A serious journalist should know that.

Nana was giving as much as he’s receiving.

I know that, Nana, but our officials should remember what our Elders taught us about how to pray: God, if you cannot help me, please leave me the way you met me. Nana, how did the Americans manage to get us beaten so massively? Despite the fanciful lingo, the American offtake partners still walk away with half the concentrate for the life of the mine. Strange how gravity only ever pulls in one direction in these negotiations, and that direction is always away from Ghana’s national interest. What disappeared under the new deal include 6% equity for the Minerals Income Investment Fund, 30% of the company’s shares to be listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange, and a Growth and Sustainability Levy. Why would any patriot accept this, Nana?

He sneered, You reduce a sophisticated fiscal instrument to market gossip. When did your once-responsible newspaper become a tabloid? Patriotism, they say, is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

We can educate Ghanaians by reducing it to basic arithmetic, Nana, which even your own economists cannot outrun. Five percent of a resource is not an instrument. It is a tip. We tipped away our lithium the way one tips a waiter, except the waiter is walking off with the whole restaurant. The so-called investors are basically giving us tips.

Ghana needed the investment. No local company had the capital to build that plant.

Ghana needs that type of “investment” the way you and I need a hole in the head. No local company had the capital because for thirteen years this same concession sat untouched, gathering dust and options, until Tesla and LG Chem developed an appetite for batteries. You did not attract investment. You waited for hunger to arrive at your gate and then sold the yard, fence and all, to whoever knocked loudest.

You make it sound sinister. It is called global supply chains.

Global supply chains, I love that phrase, Nana; truly, I will steal it for my next article. Could you tell us where Ghana sits in this chain? Because from where I am sitting, in your very expensive waiting room, we are not a link in the chain. We are the hole in the ground the chain gets dragged out of.

The Minister has explained this thoroughly on the floor of Parliament.

He explained it the way a conjurer explains a card trick after the coin has already disappeared into his own sleeve, Nana. A full explanation delivered precisely when the audience can no longer do anything about it. Tell me, is this lease a genuine act of national development, or is it what my grandmother would call “dashing away the family silver and writing ‘foreign direct investment’ on the receipt”?

Ghana remains fully committed to the welfare of its people.

That is not an answer, Nana. That is an expensively varnished communique. Nobody outside this building is permitted to see what is actually inside it.

You should be careful with your accusations in this building.

I am aware of exactly which building I am sitting in, Nana. Marble floor, chandelier, two dogs at the gate, and a lithium deposit worth billions signed away for a royalty smaller than the service charge at a Lebanese restaurant in Osu. I know precisely where I am. The question is whether the government does. Is your government not following what Zimbabwe and our Southern African cousins are doing?

An aide leans in and whispers something about the time. Nana Kwame Boadu stands, straightens his expensive kente, and offers his hand with the practiced warmth of a professional politician.

Thank you for coming. We value the free press.

You value it the way a landlord values a tenant who has stopped asking about the leaking roof, Nana. Thank you for the water. It was cold, at least.

NB:
I deliberately wrapped this essay in satire because the unvarnished truth would require a harsher vocabulary too incendiary for even this blog.

As we have written several times in this blog, there comes a point when we Africans must stop whining, stop blaming the foreign predators and begin interrogating our native accomplice, our insatiably greedy, gluttonously selfish and unpatriotic comprador elite.

History shows that no empire has ever plundered a people without first recruiting local sell-out collaborators willing to auction tomorrow for the comforts of today.

The greatest tragedy of Africa’s mineral curse is not that foreigners covet our wealth, that is the oldest instinct in imperial history, but that too often, too many Africans have volunteered to become brokers in the liquidation of our patrimony.

Rather than continuing to whine, we should raise our collective voices and make it clear to the plantation supervisors that we are tired of their fraudulent language of “strategic partnerships” and “win-win agreements.”

We should let them know that partnerships in which foreigners export prosperity while our continent exports raw ore and imports unemployment are not a partnership.

It is pure colonialism or, in the words of the immortal Kwame Nkrumah, neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism.

Africa must negotiate as a proprietor, the owners of the minerals, not as tenants begging for permission to occupy their own estate.

The government of Botswana proved that sovereignty is not a poetry but thoughtful policy. It recently compelled De Beers to return to the table because it understood that natural resources confer considerable leverage

The era of exporting geological charity must end. Not another tonne of lithium, cobalt, manganese, bauxite or rare earths should leave African ports without substantial value being added on African soil. If multinational corporations, in their infinite greed, refuse to build refineries, smelters and processing plants where the minerals are mined in Africa, then they have no business mining them at all.

After all, we are presently not benefiting from the current arrangements.

Let’s drum it into the ears of our presidents that the so-called royalties are alms; it’s ownership that creates wealth.

It’s a no-brainer that, to benefit, Africa must demand substantial equity in every strategic mineral project, ensuring that the continent shares not merely in extraction but in the profits, technology, and industrial future those resources create.

Above all, Africa must abandon the suicidal habit of competing against itself. It is a spectacle bordering on insanity that African governments blessed with the world’s most coveted strategic minerals race one another to offer the lowest taxes, the weakest regulations and the cheapest concessions to the very same corporations.

The petroleum cartel, OPEC, demonstrated decades ago that producers who act collectively command respect.

Africa’s lithium, cobalt, manganese and rare-earth producers possess enough strategic weight to shape global markets. That’s provided they first recover the confidence to act like owners rather than stupid auctioneers.

Every mining contract must be published and made available to citizens before a single signature is affixed. We must have transparency instead of the current opaque system that breeds corruption.

Let every teacher, miner, mechanic and market woman examine what politicians intend to surrender in their name.

Any agreement too shameful to survive public scrutiny is too shameful to deserve ratification.

For five hundred years we Africans have knelt before every passing empire, first with chains around our necks, then with debts around our waist, and now with the stupidiest contracts in our hands.

Brethren, the question, therefore, is no longer whether we in Africa possess the resources to become prosperous. Geology settled that argument millions of years ago when nature gave us immense natural wealth. The only question left is whether Africans possess the courage to defend what nature has already given us.

If we cannot summon that courage now, then let us at least stop pretending that our poverty was imposed upon us.

A people who repeatedly sign away their birthright cannot forever blame the thief.

At some point, we Africans must confront the willing hand that opened the door for our exploiters.

©️ Ọdọ́fin Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀‌làfẹ̀ (1st Dan, Ọdọ́fin I of Kasoa)

(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Geopolitical Analyst.)

Blog: https://femiakogun.substack.com

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