President Mahama puts mining firms on notice over 2030 raw mineral ore export ban

President John Mahama has renewed Ghana’s pledge to stop exporting raw mineral ore by 2030, telling mining companies to begin processing locally as new rules requiring more of the country’s gold to be refined at home take hold.

“I have said that by 2030 we’re not going to export any raw ores, mineral ores, out of Ghana,” Mahama told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Friday.

“So those who are mining today must be mindful that they begin to put in at least primary and secondary processing of the ores,” he said.

Besides gold, Ghana mines bauxite, manganese and diamonds, and is preparing to become a lithium producer.

Mahama first set the 2030 deadline in February at an Accra Reset event on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, where he named manganese, bauxite and iron ore as minerals that would have to be processed at home. “You’re not going to ship raw manganese ore out of Ghana,” he said then. The Accra Reset is his initiative, launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, to push African countries to retain more value from their resources.

His latest remarks, a day after he told the United Nations General Assembly that Africa would process its minerals at home, come as the policy moves from pledge to practice in gold. Since Mahama returned to office in January 2025, his government has raised royalties, increased the state’s share of gold output, made local refining compulsory for some exports and taken a firmer approach to lease renewals.

The 2030 deadline falls after Mahama’s term ends in January 2029. Mahama, who also led Ghana from 2012 to 2017, is barred by the constitution’s two-term limit from seeking re-election, meaning enforcement of the ban would rest with his successor.

Checks by JoyNews Research show the 2030 ban has not yet been written into law. Ghana currently has no law requiring minerals to be processed in the country. Section 110 of the Minerals and Mining Bill, laid before parliament on May 26, would allow the minister to prohibit the export of “unprocessed or raw mineral concentrates” and to require mining companies to process minerals locally, but only through separate regulations passed as a legislative instrument. The bill sets no deadline and makes neither step mandatory, and it is not yet clear whether the bill and the regulations will be passed before Mahama leaves office.

Former President Nana Akufo-Addo told parliament in his State of the Nation address in February 2024 that his government would lay “a Legislative Instrument to prohibit the export of bauxite in its raw state.” He also said talks were in their final phase for a $450 million refinery to process the country’s manganese.

Large-scale gold miners in Ghana already smelt ore into doré, a semi-pure alloy, before it leaves the mine site, so a ban on raw ore alone may have limited direct effect on bullion exports. Manganese and bauxite are largely exported as ore and could be more directly affected.

On gold, the state has already gone further than ore. Since July 1, large-scale miners including Newmont, Gold Fields and Zijin have been required to sell 30% of their output to the Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) in doré form, to be refined locally. Under a scheme dating to 2022, miners sold 20% of production to the state, but as refined gold.

The new purchases are settled in cedis at the Bank of Ghana reference rate, at a fixed 0.55% discount. The government wants at least one domestic refinery accredited by the London Bullion Market Association by 2030.

GoldBod signed agreements with Gold Coast Refinery in January and Royal Gold Refinery in May, each to process up to a tonne of gold a week. Since Sept 1, aggregators exporting artisanal gold have been barred from shipping unrefined doré, with exports approved only after GoldBod confirms the metal was refined in Ghana. GoldBod says nearly nine tonnes of gold it aggregated this year has been refined locally.

GoldBod, created by law in 2025, became the sole exporter of artisanal and small-scale gold in May that year, voiding export licences previously held by private traders.

Small-scale output hit a record 104 tonnes in 2025, overtaking large-scale mining for the first time. It earned close to $11 billion in foreign exchange against about $9 billion from the big miners, GoldBod chief executive Sammy Gyamfi said in July. The board bought 50 to 54 tonnes from the sector in the first half of 2026.

A sliding-scale royalty took effect on March 9, replacing a flat rate of up to 5%. Gold miners pay 5% when bullion is at or below $1,900 an ounce, rising in steps to 12% above $4,500, a ceiling prices had already crossed when the regime began. Lithium royalties move between 5% and 12% on prices from $1,500 to $3,200 a tonne. Other minerals stay at 5%.

Diplomatic missions raised concerns about the 12% ceiling and urged Ghana to apply it only when gold reaches $5,000 an ounce, the Minerals Commission said. The government kept the $4,500 threshold. The Ghana Chamber of Mines had proposed a narrower band of 4% to 8%. Companies holding development agreements, including Zijin, AngloGold Ashanti and Gold Fields, remain on those terms for now.

Parliament cut the Growth and Sustainability Levy on miners from 3% to 1% in March. The 2026 budget also abolished the 15% value added tax on mineral exploration and reconnaissance from January, a charge industry groups said had put Ghana at a disadvantage to neighbours such as Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso.

Ghana declined in April 2025 to renew Gold Fields’ lease at the Damang mine. The asset reverted to the state when the lease expired on April 18 this year, and the government approved local contractor Engineers & Planners as the successful bidder after a tender.

The government has said it will renew Gold Fields’ Tarkwa lease, which expires in 2027, but only after reviewing the company’s development plans. Minerals Commission chief Isaac Andrews Tandoh said the process “won’t be business as usual.”

The Minerals and Mining Bill, laid on May 26, would replace the 2006 mining law. It sets an initial term of 15 years for new mining leases, with renewals of up to 10 years, and contains no provision for stability or development agreements. Officials have said existing stability agreements, which lock in fiscal terms for up to 15 years, will not be renewed. The Chamber has warned that uncertainty over lease renewals could make investors question security of tenure in Ghana.

Lithium is the newest part of the sector. Parliament ratified Atlantic Lithium’s 15-year lease for the Ewoyaa project in the Central Region in March, more than two years after it was granted, making it Ghana’s first ratified lithium mining lease. The terms apply the sliding-scale royalty in place of a previously proposed flat 10% rate.

China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt has agreed to buy Atlantic Lithium for about $210 million and, separately, partner Elevra Lithium’s stake in the project for about $70 million. If both deals close, Huayou would hold about 87% of Ewoyaa, with the Ghanaian state holding the remaining 13%. Atlantic Lithium said on Sept 17 that Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board had approved the takeover. The deal still needs court and shareholder approval, as well as clearance from authorities in Ghana, China and ECOWAS.

Huayou has said Atlantic Lithium would be delisted from the Ghana Stock Exchange after the takeover, raising questions over local ownership provisions in the lease. Ewoyaa is designed to produce spodumene concentrate, a partly processed form of lithium.

Mahama has applied the same logic to cocoa. In Addis Ababa he said Ghana would stop using foreign loans to buy its beans. “We have enough cedis in Ghana to pay for our cocoa,” he said. In New York he said Ghana would process 50% of its beans locally and that the Ghana Cocoa Board was about to issue a bond, cleared by the finance minister, to fund purchases without pledging the beans to foreign lenders.

“Once we buy it ourselves we can ship it at our own pace,” he said.