Kofi Buah Backs Strategic Investor For Valco, Says Status Quo Is Bleeding Ghana
Ghana has spent years defending VALCO as a strategic national asset. The uncomfortable question now is whether the country is protecting the company or merely preserving its ownership while the asset deteriorates.
Minister for Lands and Natural Resources Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah says the current situation cannot continue, warning that VALCO is operating far below its potential while the state carries costs it cannot indefinitely sustain.
His prescription is a strategic investor.
Kofi Buah says government intends to press ahead with efforts to attract capital capable of rehabilitating VALCO’s production capacity and restoring the smelter to a meaningful position within Ghana’s long promised integrated aluminium industry.
“It is bleeding, it is bleeding,” the Minister told a policy engagement in Accra, arguing that sentiment about state ownership cannot become a substitute for making the company productive.
The comments were made during a strategic working visit and policy dialogue between the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, where the Minister and senior officials presented the state of Ghana’s lands, mining, forestry and mineral development sectors.
The engagement followed an August 10, 2026 request by IMANI for a fact finding dialogue covering the Ministry’s inherited baseline, performance, operational challenges, reforms and major policy interventions.
Present at the meeting were Kofi Buah, senior officials of the Ministry and representatives of agencies under it, including the Minerals Commission, Forestry Commission, Lands Commission and Ghana Geological Survey Authority.
The IMANI delegation was led by Franklin Cudjoe, Founding President and CEO of IMANI, and included Selorm Branttie, Vice President for Strategy; Kay Codjoe, writer and IMANI associate; and Ransford Brobbey, IMANI associate.
Kofi Buah told the meeting that VALCO still possesses enormous industrial potential but is operating far below what its infrastructure was designed to deliver.
He referred to the smelter’s five potlines, noting that only a fraction of the facility’s capacity was currently functioning.
The Minister argued that the central government does not have unlimited fiscal space to continue injecting the capital necessary to rehabilitate the company while simultaneously carrying the consequences of inefficient operations.
His conclusion was unusually direct.
“You need to find a strategic investor.”
Kofi Buah said the alternative was to preserve a state asset in name while allowing its productive capacity to deteriorate.
The Minister challenged what he described as an emotional attachment to maintaining the existing ownership and operating arrangement simply because VALCO is a state company.
In his view, the more important consideration should be whether the asset is producing enough value for Ghana.
That raises a larger political economy question.
At what point does defending state ownership stop being economic patriotism and become expensive sentiment?
VALCO occupies an important place in Ghana’s long standing ambition to move from exporting raw bauxite towards an integrated aluminium industry.
The Ministry’s broader strategy is to align the country’s bauxite resources, GIADEC and downstream processing so Ghana captures more value from its minerals rather than remaining principally an exporter of raw materials.
Within that chain, a functioning aluminium smelter becomes critical.
Kofi Buah argued that reviving VALCO could create significantly more employment and economic activity than preserving a severely constrained operation.
He suggested that restoring more of the potlines alone could dramatically change the productive capacity and commercial outlook of the facility.
The Minister also described resistance that has sometimes accompanied attempts to introduce prospective investors or partners to the company.
He recounted an occasion when a group intended merely to visit and inspect the facility encountered opposition from workers.
For Kofi Buah, that revealed the tension at the heart of the VALCO debate.
Ghana wants the company preserved, but preservation without investment may itself threaten the company’s future.
The policy question is therefore not simply whether VALCO should remain state owned.
It is what Ghana should demand from any strategic investor.
A credible partnership would have to demonstrate more than the ability to inject cash.
It would need to answer questions about how much capital will be invested, how many potlines will be rehabilitated, what productive capacity will be restored, how much employment will be created, what ownership interest Ghana will retain, what guarantees will exist for local content and downstream manufacturing, how electricity costs will be managed without transferring excessive liabilities back to the state, and whether the agreement will
strengthen Ghana’s aluminium value chain or merely rescue one company.
Those questions matter because a poorly designed strategic partnership could simply replace one form of inefficiency with another.
But refusing investment because of the symbolism of state ownership carries its own cost.
A smelter that Ghana owns but cannot fully operate is not necessarily more patriotic than one in which the State partners with capital capable of making the asset productive.
Kofi Buah’s argument is therefore likely to reopen a much older national debate.
The real choice may not be between state ownership and privatisation.
It may be between an asset Ghana owns sentimentally and an asset Ghana makes work economically.
And on VALCO, the Minister’s position is clear: the status quo cannot continue.
In a related development, the Board Chairman of VALCO has requested to meet with the IMANI Team to offer alternative pathways to keep VALCO running, asserting that the story about losses are overblown.
By Kay Codjoe, IMANI Associate