Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships in Mining: From Engagement to Development in Ghana

This chapter will assess the potential for multi-stakeholder partnerships between mining companies, NGOs, local communities, and local government to foster community-level development in Ghana. Although such partnerships have been attempted in other resource-rich African countries such as South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), only recently has Ghana seen initiatives of this nature. Mining companies are often ill-equipped internally to promote development, and local governance structures often lack the capacity to develop cohesive socio-economic development strategies in areas affected by mining. The chapter will assess the possibilities and challenges of realizing community-level development through multi-stakeholder partnerships in Ghana. Multi-stakeholder partnerships have the potential to address institutional weaknesses, governance gaps and the high poverty levels typical of rural Ghana where mining takes place. We argue that, for multi-stakeholder partnerships to realize their full potential, backward and forward supply and value chain linkages within the economy, as well as a forward consideration of economic legacies that would survive mineral extraction, must be fostered. As has been widely noted in the literature, the extractive sector has a troubling legacy in developing countries, including many African states.1