Abstract
This chapter investigates the activities of a Chinese mining company in the small-scale gold mining sector in a corner of Ghana. It questions the legality of its operations, given that small-scale mining is by law ‘reserved for Ghanaians’, and argues that bribery combined with corruption amongst state officials has enabled the company to operate at the margins of legality with relative impunity. While local opposition to company activities occurred, the local movement was confronted by combined state-corporate power. This case study of a local resource conflict ultimately informs us about the character of the contemporary Ghanaian state and state–business–society relations, highlighting profound changes that have occurred in which the interests of foreign private capital and local political elites are privileged, while those of local people remain marginalised.
The authors would like to acknowledge the grant provided by the International Growth Centre that enabled the fieldwork for this research to be undertaken. See http://www.theigc.org/project/the-impact-of-chinese-involvement-in-small-scale-gold-mining-in-ghana/
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The phrase was used by one member of the focus group, a former worker from Shaanxi Mining (Ghana) Limited (SMGHL), and attributed to the Chinese management of the company. It was chorused by the rest of the focus group and appeared to be a phrase that was oft repeated amongst local community members as a humorous, but salient, reference to the manner in which SMGHL operated.
- 2.
Data collection methods entailed key informant interviews with governmental, NGO and private sector actors at central, regional and district levels, plus interviews and focus groups at community level. At national level, interviews were undertaken in April 2014 with relevant central government stakeholders, including the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources; the Minerals Commission; and the Environment Protection Agency. Fieldwork in the Upper East region was undertaken in July 2014 by the authors. Regional-level interviews were undertaken in Bolgatanga, capital of the Upper East region, including the Lands Commission, the Minerals Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, Ghana Police Service, Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the judicial service, as well as international and local NGOs involved in mining issues and in attempts to resolve the local conflict that had emerged. In Talensi district, the team engaged with the political and administrative leadership (i.e. the District Chief Executive, District Coordinating Director, Planning Officer), as well as the leadership of the District directorates of the Ghana Education Service (GES) and Ghana Health Service (GHS), the district police commander, and the regent of Tongo and his council of elders. At the mining site in the community of Gbane, we interviewed community leaders, traditional authorities, school teachers, the local District Assembly member, community-based organisations, including the local activist group, the Movement of Gbane People for Justice, as well SMGHL and the two mining concession holders working with the mining company. A total of 21 interviews were undertaken involving 35 respondents. Additionally, focus groups discussions were held in six local communities in Talensi district, three in mining communities and three in non-mining communities. Visits were also made to the mining sites of two small-scale licensed concession holders not working with SMGHL, as well as to SMGHL’s administrative and processing site.
- 3.
See presentation by Ghana’s Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources on 23 September 2014, http://www.theigc.org/multimedia/growth-week-2014-country-session-ghana/?back=3837.
- 4.
Aubynn et al. (2010, p. 3) state that out of an estimated 250,000 ASM operators, “less than 30 percent […] are duly registered and licensed”. An earlier report estimated that 85 per cent operated without a licence (Carson et al. 2005). Therefore, the large majority of ASM operators remain informal and illicit.
- 5.
Ghana News Agency, 11 May 2012, http://www.modernghana.com/newsthread1/394850/1/.
- 6.
A signed and dated copy of this agreement has been seen.
- 7.
The commitment fee paid to Yenyeya by SMGHL of ‘not more than’ $100,000 was made up of US $15,000 upon signing the agreement; $10,000 upon receipt of Purbotabaa’s mining concession; $10,000 upon SMGHL entering the mining concession to begin operations; and ‘after the construction of the shaft, YENYEYA will be paid an amount of Ten Thousand US Dollars every month until the final balance is paid fully upon the completion of the Mine Construction including the Processing Plant’. Contract Mining and Management Agreement between Yenyeya Mining Group and SMGHL, signed and dated 24 September 2008.
- 8.
The defendants’ lawyer stated in January 2015 that this failure by the judicial services to provide a Chinese interpreter had been going on for over two years. Interview, Accra, 14 January, 2015.
- 9.
‘Tindana’ literally means the land owner within the people of Upper East and Upper West regions of Ghana. The tindana holds the land in trust for the people, in much the same way as do chiefs in other regions of the country. Additionally, the tindana is also the spiritual leader who performs traditional sacrifices to the gods of land on behalf of the people. Therefore, in the two Upper regions, chiefs do not own land, they are only the political leaders of their communities. Hence, the dispute concerning the Gbane chief’s lease of land to SMGHL.
- 10.
This case is also ongoing, although similar charges against a third defendant have been dismissed.
- 11.
The district police chief stated that 20 police officers drawn from Bolgatanga and Tongo were stationed at SMGHL’s mine.
- 12.
- 13.
Corruption is certainly not limited to developing countries in Africa or elsewhere, and there are many examples of corrupt practices in countries of the Global North, at times involving large corporations; see Szeftel (2000, pp. 296–7) for examples in Western Europe in the period 1999–2000.
References
Akabzaa, T. (2009). Mining in Ghana: Implications for national economic development and poverty reduction. In B. Campbell (Ed.), Mining in Africa: Regulation and development (pp. 25–65). London: Pluto Press.
Akabzaa, T., & Darimani, A. (2001). Impact of mining sector investment in Ghana: A study of the Tarkwa mining region (A Draft Report Prepared for SAPRI). http://www.saprin.org/ghana/research/gha_mining.pdf
Amin, S. (2004). The liberal virus: Permanent war and the Americanization of the world. London: Pluto Press.
Andrews, N. (2015). Digging for survival and/or justice?: The drives of illegal mining activities in Western Ghana. Africa Today, 62(2), 2–24.
Anyidoho, N. A., & Crawford, G. (2014). Leveraging national and global links for local rights advocacy: WACAM’s challenge to the power of transnational gold mining in Ghana. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 35(4), 483–502.
Aryee, B. N. A. (2003). Small-scale mining in Ghana as a sustainable development activity: Its development and a review of the contemporary issues and challenges. In G. M. Hilson (Ed.), The socio-economic impacts of artisanal and small-scale mining in developing countries (pp. 379–418). Lisse: A.A. Balkema Publishers.
Aubynn, T. et al. (2010). Mainstreaming artisanal and small-scale mining: A background to policy advocacy, draft report, May 2010, Ghana Chamber of Mines, Accra.
Blundo, G., & Olivier de Sardan, J.-P., with Arifari, N. B., & Alou, M. T. (2006). Everyday corruption and the state: Citizens and public officials in Africa. London: Zed Books.
Brown, E., & Cloke, J. (2004). Neoliberal reform, governance and corruption in the South: Assessing the anti-corruption crusade. Antipode, 36(2), 272–294.
Bush, R. (2009). “Soon there will be no-one left to the corpses to the morgue”: Accumulation and abjection in Ghana’s mining communities. Resources Policy, 34(1–2), 57–63.
Carson, M. et al. (2005). Managing mineral resources through public-private partnerships: Mitigating conflict in Ghanaian gold mining, Working Paper WWS591c, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton.
Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) (2008). The state of human rights in mining communities in Ghana. Accra: CHRAJ and Government of Ghana.
Crawford, G. (2006). The World Bank and good governance: Rethinking the state or consolidating neo-liberalism? In A. Paloni & M. Zanardi (Eds.), The IMF, the world bank and policy reform (pp. 115–141). London: Routledge.
Fisher, E. (2007). Occupying the margins: Labour integration and social exclusion in artisanal mining in Tanzania. Development and Change, 38, 735–760.
Ghana News Agency. (2012, May 11). Police arrests assembly member and 11 others for rioting. http://www.modernghana.com/newsthread1/394850/1/. Accessed 6 June 2011.
Glaser, B. G. (1992). Basics of grounded theory analysis: Emergence vs forcing. Mill Valley: Sociology Press.
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.
Harrison, G. (2004). The World Bank and Africa: The construction of governance states. London: Routledge.
Harrison, G. (2010). Neoliberal Africa: The impact of global social engineering. London: Zed.
Hibou, B. (2004). From privatising the economy to privatising the state: An analysis of the continual formation of the state. In B. Hibou (Ed.), Privatising the state (Revised English ed., pp. 1–48). London: Hurst.
Hilson, G. M. (2004). Structural adjustment in Ghana: Assessing the impacts of mining-sector reform. Africa Today, 51(2), 53–77.
Hilson, G. M. (2012). Poverty traps in small-scale mining communities: The case of Sub-Saharan Africa. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 33, 180–197.
Hilson, G., Hilson, A., & Adu-Darko, E. (2014). Chinese participation in Ghana’s informal gold mining economy: Drivers, implications and clarifications. Journal of Rural Studies, 34, 292–303.
Leftwich, A. (1994). Governance, the state and the politics of development. Development and Change, 25, 363–386.
Luning, S. (2008). Liberalisation of the gold mining sector in Burkina Faso. Review of African Political Economy, 35(117), 387–401.
Minerals Commission, Ghana. (2014). Document obtained from the Minerals Commission, Accra, thought to be the small-scale mining section extracted from the annual report.
Owusu-Koranteng, D. (2008). Mining investment and community struggles. Review of African Political Economy, 35(117), 467–473.
Parliament of the Republic of Ghana. (2006). The Minerals and Mining Act, No 703, Accra.
Provisional National Defence Council. (1986). Mining Law 1986 (Provisional National Defence Council Law 153), Accra.
Provisional National Defence Council. (1989). Small-Scale Gold Mining Law 1989 (Provisional National Defence Council Law 218), Accra
Reporting Oil and Gas. (2014). Shaanxi mining compensates 43 affected farmers, 12 August 2014. http://www.reportingoilandgas.org/shaanxi-mining-compensates-43-affected-farmers/. Accessed 14 Aug 2014.
Szeftel, M. (2000). Between governance and under-development: Accumulation and Africa’s “catastrophic corruption”. Review of African Political Economy, 27(84), 287–306.
Tschakert, P., & Singha, K. (2007). Contaminated identities: Mercury and marginalization in Ghana’s artisanal mining sector. Geoforum, 38(6), 1304–1321.
Tsuma, W. (2010). Gold mining in Ghana: Actors, alliances and power. Berlin: ZEF Development Studies, Lit Verlag.
Van Bockstael, S. (2014). The persistence of informality: Perspectives on the future of artisanal mining in Liberia. Futures, 62(Part A: 0), 10–20.
WACAM (2013). WACAM @15: Looking back to look forward, 5 September 2013. Tarkwa: WACAM.
Wiegratz, J., & Cesnulyte, E. (2016). Money talks: Moral economies of earning a living in neoliberal East Africa. New Political Economy, 21(1), 1–25.
World Bank. (2005). The millennium development goals and small-scale mining: A conference for forging partnerships for action. Workshop report, June 16–17, World Bank, Washington, DC. http://www.ddiglobal.org/login/resources/mdgs-and-small-scale-mining.pdf. Accessed 16 Feb 2016.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Crawford, G., Agyeyomah, C., Mba, A. (2017). Ghana – Big Man, Big Envelope, Finish: Chinese Corporate Exploitation in Small-Scale Mining. In: Engels, B., Dietz, K. (eds) Contested Extractivism, Society and the State. Development, Justice and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58811-1_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58811-1_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-58810-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-58811-1
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)