Lawmakers in Ghana are weighing up whether to greenlight one of Africa’s largest lithium mines after civil society groups urged them to do more to ensure that the project benefits the country and supports green development.
Ghana granted Australian miner Atlantic Lithium a lease to open the country’s first lithium mine in the hope of capitalising on the EV-driven boom for the silvery metal, which is used to manufacture batteries for electric cars and other clean tech products.
But as the deal awaited ratification by parliament in December, the government withdrew the agreement after campaigners and analysts in Ghana warned that the terms risked shortchanging the West African nation at a time when it is seeking to benefit from the scramble for battery minerals.
Atlantic Lithium, which had earlier raised concerns that falling lithium prices were affecting the viability of the project, has since put forward a revised agreement. This new deal would see it pay higher royalties to the government when lithium prices rise, as they have since the start of this year. Lawmakers are expected to review the new terms of the contract for the much-delayed project this month.
Like other resource-rich African nations, Ghana, the continent’s largest gold producer, is seeking a bigger share of mining revenues to spur development and benefit local people.
Experts told Climate Home News the negotiations with Atlantic Lithium highlighted the difficulties for governments to negotiate preferential terms with mining companies, on which they depend for revenues and expertise.
“Lithium is Ghana’s first green mineral and will set the benchmark for future critical mineral agreements,” opposition lawmaker Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong, a member of the committee on lands and natural resources, told local media in December. “Weak deals now risk setting a poor precedent for the country.”
Ghana’s lithium potential
Atlantic Lithium says the Ewoyaa project could produce 3.6 million tonnes of lithium spodumene concentrates over the mine’s 12-year lifespan – turning Ghana into one of Africa’s top lithium producers and a significant new supply source for the EV battery industry outside of established producers in Australia, Chile and China.
The lithium is expected to be exported to the US and further refined for use in EV batteries. Atlantic Lithium financed the exploration of the mining site by forward-selling Ghana’s lithium resources to Elevra, a North American lithium producer which has a supply agreement with Tesla.
Atlantic Lithium previously obtained a concession to cut the royalty rate it would pay Ghana from the mandated 10% to 5%. The company argued that the adjustment was necessary to make the project viable after lithium prices had plummeted by more than 80% since 2023.
The company’s move sparked a public outcry. Policy think-tanks that analysed the agreement described it as “colonial” and warned that parliament risked “repeating history’s mistakes” if it approved the deal. The Natural Resource Governance Institute challenged Atlantic Lithium’s claims about its revised profitability and urged the government to scrutinise the assumptions made by the company.
In light of the criticism, the government withdrew the deal in December.
“When governments depend on mining projects to project a sense of economic progress, they stop negotiating for value and start negotiating out of fear,” Bright Simons, of the Accra-based IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, told Climate Home News.
A balancing act
Atlantic Lithium has since put forward a revised agreement based on a proposal by the minister for lands and natural resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, to establish a sliding scale for royalty rates based on lithium prices.
The scale would start at 5% when lithium spodumene prices are below $1,500 per tonne and rise to 12% when prices exceed $3,000 per tonne. Lithium prices are currently at a two-year high and climbed above $2,000 at the start of the year, as analysts forecast stronger demand growth.
Henry Wilkinson, Atlantic Lithium’s communications manager, told Climate Home News the revised agreement was aligned with current legislation and would “ensure that value is generated for Ghana and Ghanaians”.
The government, he said, should find “the appropriate balance” between attracting foreign investment and retaining value from its nascent lithium industry.
“If the government sets fiscal terms that are deemed unattractive for companies looking to advance projects in Ghana, the country risks missing out on securing a position within the value chain; particularly with other countries, such as Mali, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa all moving ahead with their lithium production ambitions,” he added.
Fear of missing out
But this new approach hasn’t convinced everyone. For Simons, of the IMANI think-tank, the revised agreement still falls short of Ghana’s interests.
“African youth are tired of being told all the time that Africa is rich underground when the signs of destitution are so stark above ground,” he told Climate Home News.
“The narrative that the critical minerals rush is about building the next phase of the global economy has created a massive new wave of anxiety that the continent will miss out yet again. It feels like [a] determined betrayal.”
Atlantic Lithium will allocate 1% of the project’s revenues to a community fund that will finance development projects in the local area. But the protracted negotiations have left people living near the mining site in limbo.
Farming communities say Atlantic Lithium told them to stop planting crops three years ago because they would need to be resettled ahead of the mine opening. While they await a decision on the mine, no one has yet received compensation for the loss of earnings, the Ghanaian NGO Friends of the Nation told Climate Home News. The community representatives in the negotiations with Atlantic Lithium receive stipends from the company, the NGO added, which it says poses a conflict of interest.
Atlantic Lithium said that the delays have been “beyond the company’s control”.
Unequal bargaining power
For Marisa Lourenço, a South Africa-based risk consultant, African governments are too reliant on foreign expertise for extracting their mineral resources and this often limits their bargaining power.
“The broad absence of local beneficiation means that African governments can do very little with their resources and this keeps them reliant on the terms put forward by foreign mining companies,” she said.
In Ghana, the mining industry is the largest tax-paying sector in the country. And the initial agreement to develop the Ewoyaa mine was based on a feasibility study carried out by Atlantic Lithium, said Patrick Stephenson, Ghana country manager at the Natural Resource Governance Institute.
Stephenson told Climate Home News that delays to the ratification of the project’s mining lease show that the government needs to rely on its own data and analysis to inform decisions “rather than on company-determined interests and priorities”.
That could include the creation of a state‑led minerals analytical unit capable of conducting its own profitability modelling, price benchmarking, feasibility studies and project valuation, he added.
