The political economy of natural resource conflicts in Ghana: The case of the Songor

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In contrast to studies that assume that self-interest is the primary factor motivating African leaders in natural resource conflicts, we argue that successive Ghanaian governments have intervened in these conflicts by attempting to balance the imperatives of national development, neoliberal reforms, and regime survival. This argument is based on an analysis of the struggles over access to the Songor – a salt-yielding lagoon in southeastern Ghana – as an outcome of the social contradiction engendered by the pursuit of high modernist development aspirations within a framework of neoliberal austerity. In Ghana, successive governments have deployed the coercive apparatus of the state on behalf of private investors in their struggles with community members over access to the Songor. Drawing on interviews, focus group discussions, policy documents and media reports, we argue that the fate of the communities around the Songor illustrates the infringement on economic and cultural rights of local communities when such rights clash with the developmental aspirations of national elites. The resulting economic and social dislocations experienced by the affected communities have been implicitly accepted by the government as the necessary price to pay for development of the salt industry in Ghana. The Songor case also illustrates a fundamental paradox of neoliberal development where the state is expected to abandon its economic role, but the private sector is incapable of filling the gap without substantial material support from the state.