The ‘new extractivism’ in Ghana: A critical review of its development prospects

Abstract

Since the 1980s all Ghanaian governments have promoted large-scale mining by transnational mining companies (TNMCs) as a fundamental development strategy. This is consistent with the euphoria in the international development community about the development potential of extractive industries. Paradoxically, this ‘new extractivism’ has spawned horrific injustices against peasants and artisanal and small-scale miners, a segment of the citizenry whose wellbeing development is supposed to promote. These injustices, particularly land-dispossessions, are similar to the violence of primitive accumulation that created the agrarian transformations in some core Western countries, leading to capitalism and capitalist development. This paper critically examines the capitalist development potential of mining-extractivism in Ghana. Based on the theory of ‘uneven and combined development’, the specificity of foreign capital accumulation in Africa within a globalised capitalist economy, and the way in which these have shaped the integration of African economies into the global economy, the paper concludes that the prospects for capitalist development in Ghana from extractivism agrarian change are dismal.