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.
-
Outdated geological data limits Africa’s push to benefit from its mineral wealth
As companies flock to Africa to secure minerals for the energy transition, unreliable and century-old mapping risks stifling investment -
At ‘Davos of mining’, Saudi Arabia shapes new narrative on minerals
Over 100 countries attended the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh, putting the Kingdom at the heart of discussions on minerals for the energy transition -
South Africa’s platinum mine dumps get a second look as clean energy lifts demand
Mining firms say extracting minerals from tailings is a sustainable way to boost global supplies, but local communities want to see benefits this time around
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.”
-
Nigeria’s push to cash in on lithium rush gets off to a rocky start
The West African nation wants to supply refined lithium to the EV battery industry to diversify its economy away from oil – but early processing efforts are facing challenges -
Ending poverty and gangs: How Zambia seeks to cash in on the global drive for EVs
Zambia is wooing international investors to develop its copper resources but communities dependent on illegal mining want a better deal -
Lithium boom: Zimbabwe looks to China to secure a place in the EV battery supply chain
Chinese investors have flocked to Zimbabwe to secure lithium supplies, promising local development. But analysts warn Zimbabwe needs more robust governance for communities to reap the benefits
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.
The post West Africa’s first lithium mine awaits go-ahead as Ghana seeks better deal appeared first on Climate Home News.
West Africa’s first lithium mine awaits go-ahead as Ghana seeks better deal
One of the key expected outcomes from the upcoming COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, is the launch of a “just transition mechanism”.
This follows years of calls from civil society to support a “just transition” as countries shift towards low-emissions energy systems and away from fossil fuels.
At the COP30 UN climate talks last year in the Brazilian city of Belém parties agreed to establish a “mechanism” to support this goal, called the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM).
Groups that have championed the BAM want it to act as a central hub on just transitions, providing support for workers and communities around the world.
However, the details of exactly what the much-touted BAM will consist of remain vague, with developed and developing countries disagreeing about its functions and purpose.
Disagreements continued at the UN climate talks in Bonn in June 2026, including on the crucial question of how the BAM will be financed.
Here, Carbon Brief looks at where the idea for the BAM came from, how it could support just transitions and what to expect from COP31.
How has a ‘just transition’ featured in UN climate talks?
A “just transition” is the idea that workers and communities should be supported in the shift to a low-carbon economy. It is a central principle behind the idea of climate justice.
Often, the term refers to those linked to the fossil-fuel industry, but it can also refer to transitions taking place in agriculture, heavy industry and various other sectors.
The concept originated in the 1980s, when US labour unions forged alliances with environmental justice groups. It has since become a key part of international climate discussions.
The preamble to the 2015 Paris Agreement includes a commitment to “tak[e] into account the imperatives of a just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs in accordance with nationally defined development priorities”.
Bert De Wel, policy officer at the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), tells Carbon Brief:
“The labour movement is very happy with the wide audience and broad political support that the concept has received since its inception in the 1980s. The inclusion in the Paris Agreement, with the reference to the creation of decent work and quality jobs was a milestone for the movement. While other demands have been added…we continue to stress the labour dimension as being central to the concept.”
Three years after the creation of the Paris Agreement, at COP24 in the former coal-mining city of Katowice, the Polish presidency highlighted the issue of just transitions.
The need for carbon-cutting policies to ensure “a just transition of the workforce” that creates “decent work and quality jobs” was included in the “Silesia declaration”, issued by the presidency during the first week of COP24.
While the declaration was only signed by 50 countries – roughly a quarter of the parties at the summit – it was still “noted” in the final COP text.
This helped to drive momentum behind the idea, culminating in formal agreement at COP27 in Egypt to launch a “work programme on just transition” (JTWP).
De Wel says the establishment of the JTWP was a “major step forward” that allowed parties to “speak about just transition in more concrete terms”.
In the years since, negotiators have worked to flesh out the JTWP, with disagreements between parties about what its purpose should be.
Broadly, developed countries would like it to focus on domestic workforces, while some nations want a more global outlook, including support for transitions in developing countries.
The JTWP has proved a challenging negotiating space, with talks at the COP29 summit in 2024 closing without an agreement, in what one observer dubbed a “betrayal”.
However, despite these frustrations, parties at COP30 in Brazil agreed to establish a new institutional mechanism on just transitions, which has become widely known as the BAM. The move was hailed as a “victory” by civil society.
Where did the ‘just transition mechanism’ come from?
In the run-up to COP30, civil society began to push for the establishment of an “institutional arrangement” that would move work under the JTWP from talk into action.
(This was originally called the “Belém action mechanism” by civil society groups, who subsequently updated this to the “Belém-Antalya mechanism” following the outcome at COP30. However, in the JTWP text agreed at COP30 it is only described as a “mechanism”, sometimes also referred to as the “just transition mechanism”.)
Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition at NGO umbrella group Climate Action Network (CAN) International, tells Carbon Brief:
“The idea of the mechanism emerged from the collaboration of civil society, trade unions, feminist groups, youth and Indigenous peoples in the UNFCCC.
“It was clear that the kind of activities being run under the JTWP – two dialogues a year and one ministerial – would not support the delivery of just-transition strategies on the ground, so a new approach was developed to get words into action.”
Following the inception of the idea, civil society did “tonnes of stuff to boost it up the agenda”, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want, tells Carbon Brief.
This ranged from presenting demands and proposals to different constituents, organising joint letters and writing policy papers, all the way through to designing logos, creating memes and even a song.
These ef