Ghana’s Bauxite Boom
Image: Thomas Cristofoletti for Foreign Policy
TANO-OFFIN FOREST RESERVE, Ghana—
For centuries, the people of Kyekyewere, a tiny town nestled in a forest in the Ashanti region of Ghana, got their drinking water from a winding stream called Desere, which runs out of Offin River within the Tano-Offin Forest Reserve. But today, deforestation upstream has muddied the water, making it unusable. More than 2,000 people are forced to rely instead on a borehole.
Residents fear more such change to come.
Beneath the lush forest that envelops the town lie what local officials estimate is 350 million tons of bauxite, a valuable mineral used to produce aluminum products from teaspoons to fighter jets.
As part of a controversial $2 billion deal struck with China in 2018, Ghana has set its sights on mining the forests of the Upper Guinean Forest, a delicate tropical forest that is vital to the planet’s carbon dioxide cycle and is home to thousands of plant and animal species, including forest elephants, chimpanzees, leopards, and hippopotamus.
The Chinese firm Sinohydro will build the infrastructure on these sites, and Ghana will pay back the costs with proceeds from its sales of refined bauxite. Beijing released a first tranche of funding—$649 million—in November 2019.
Read the full article on Foreign Policy.
