A crowded desk has put me behind on Ghana’s news and current affairs. Since I write mainly about policy, and policy matters are always voluminous, backlogs build up dramatically.Meanwhile, persuading those who ought to be most interested in policy – the educated middle class – to read anything of substance and participate in public debate is a war I seem destined to lose.Yet on the ongoing Damang matter, I have received so many requests for clarification and information that I have decided to spare myself further headaches by setting out this relatively short brief for those who genuinely care about the issues.Bias and InterestThe first thing to get out of the way is my connection to the matter. Those who read my work know that I was sued for 10 million Ghana Cedis (GHS) on 28th May 2025 by Ibrahim Mahama and his company, Engineers & Planners, over an article I published on 19th April 2025. The core argument, which I summarised on LinkedIn, was as follows:“…resource nationalism requires sophistication. It demands sound policy execution and the ability to use correct data and quality market intelligence for solid decision-making.”Ibrahim Mahama and his company (he owns 100% of it) objected to two points in the essay:1. That Gold Fields’ decision to pause mining at Damang had hit E&P financially hard.2. That E&P’s creditors were “up in arms” in the wake of those financial developments.I considered the lawsuit wholly misconceived and mounted purely as a device – what Americans call a “strategic lawsuit against public participation” (SLAPP) – to silence me and dissuade me from scrutinising Ibrahim’s business dealings.Both points are straightforward factual inferences. If observing that a company whose $300 million contract has been paused has suffered financially, and that its creditors – the bulk of whose lending directly underpins the company’s contract-mining operations – are “up in arms,” constitutes defamation, then financial journalism as a discipline would have long since perished.I made clear at the time that I would not relent – so long as I can find a few spare hours among my many obligations – in subjecting Ibrahim and other politically exposed individuals in Ghana to scrutiny where doing so can improve the quality of governance.I reject the notion that this makes me a biased commentator. The original thesis of my essay about the right way for a country to secure fuller control of its natural resources remains extremely relevant. The fact that Ibrahim’s company is now poised to take over the Damang mine, with political controversy erupting as a result, confirms the overwhelming public interest in the subject I was writing about.Since the matter is before the courts, I will exercise restraint. We shall have every opportunity through the court process to shine full light on the financial and creditor dimensions of the Damang controversy that prompted the essay at the centre of the defamation case.What I intend to do in this short essay is revisit my original analysis about how to get resource nationalism right.Governance FirstBefore I get to the “resource nationalism” question (i.e. Ghana favouring its own businesspeople in deals involving the country’s natural resources) I want to take a quick look at the good governance angle.Many Ghanaians support the idea of bending the rules to favour Ghanaians when it comes to our natural resources and who gets to profit from them. After all, most foreign investors come from countries whose governments do everything possible to confer an advantage on their own enterprises.But when economic nationalism is done poorly, it ends up damaging the environment for local businesspeople too. When it only favours the connected and the powerful, those beneficiaries will not confine their muscle to bullying foreign companies – they will pummel local competitors as well. That is why the rules, tools, and methods used in advancing economic nationalism must be well thought through.I wrote my initial article because the way government agencies went about dislodging Gold Fields from Damang was not smart. It was crude, brash, and poorly reasoned.I mentioned E&P because they clearly had a serious grievance with Gold Fields. At the time, I focused on the adverse financial effects of the mining pause on E&P, but the dispute is plainly much larger. E&P is now reportedly pursuing claims against Gold Fields worth USD 474.9 million in relation to Tarkwa, and USD 264.7 million specifically in respect of Damang – a combined $740 million worth of grievances, if we are to believe the reports.I examined carefully the basis on which the Gold Fields licence was denied renewal and concluded that it was wholly frivolous. My straightforward point was this: if we develop a regulatory culture in which such poor reasoning becomes acceptable because it is being deployed against “foreigners”, we will eventually discover that local entrepreneurs end up at the sharp end of that same stick.Consider the context of my warning. A foreign mining company pauses operations to assess whether further investment makes commercial sense. Its local contractor, a highly powerful business, loses serious money as a result. The local business offers to buy the mine. The foreign company declines to sell. Then, its licence renewal falls due. The relevant government agency now deploys abjectly frivolous grounds to deny the renewal.A year later, the mine passes to the local business. One can argue that the end justifies the means. I understand where that sentiment comes from. But slippery slopes have a habit of tripping up more than we bargained for.You might say that even if the licence denial was administratively shabby, no specific law was breached, and the handover to the powerful local business is being conducted in a lawful manner. I take that point. But the rule of law extends beyond the strict letter of the law – it is also about substantive propriety. More importantly, what starts off as a shoddy administrative process often leads to actual legal breaches.Consider how the handover has been managed so far. A tender was hastily constructed to solicit bids demonstrating a minimum financial capacity of $500 million, yet prospective bidders were given just seven days. The tender was announced on 24th March 2026. The main bidding document (bearing the unmistakable analytical fingerprints of top mining consultant Afenu) did not go online until 25th March. The deadline was 31st March.Reflect on what was being demanded in that seven-day window: a geological assessment of a complex cutback operation, a mine development plan spanning ten years, a comprehensive technical submission, and the assembly of statutory clearance documents. Anyone with even minimal exposure to the sector will tell you that such a transaction conventionally demands a minimum of 60 to 90 days in any credible international mineral rights tender.The African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) own procurement guidelines for comparable high-value transactions recommend no fewer than 45 days for expressions of interest, followed by a further request-for-proposal stage. The World Bank’s Procurement Regulations for borrowers set 30 days as the minimum for large works contracts. And Damang is orders of magnitude more complex than a construction contract.Seven days is, in effect, an insider’s window. Regardless of any textual compliance with Regulation 257.Only one bid qualified for full evaluation; the other three had been disqualified at various stages for failing to be fully responsive. That bid came from a company that has been on site for over two decades as a contractor, that has been attempting to buy out the lease from the previous owners for two years without success – hence the earlier “no objection” certificate obtained from the then government – and that knows the mine’s documentation intimately, having been the incumbent contractor throughout the transition planning process. Such a company could realistically prepare a compliant, technically detailed submission in seven days. Every external party – whether a Ghanaian mining house needing to mobilise advisers and funding commitments, or a potential consortium partner needing to conduct even preliminary due diligence – was structurally disadvantaged before the starting gun had even fired. To seal their fate, those who requested timeline extensions were brusquely brushed off.How can this qualify as true resource nationalism? Is it resource nationalism only when insiders win every deal?Given that a one-year provisional lease had to be issued to Gold Fields last year to paper over the shambolic approach to the renewal denial, the government had many months to undertake a pre-qualification after a market engagement exercise. And it could easily have been launched in the weeks after the transitional lease was ratified in July 2025, nine months earlier. Seven days was a deliberate choice, and its consequences for competition were entirely foreseeable.Any resource nationalism strategy that denies all qualified Ghanaians a fair crack at the action, and is executed with such evident lack of strategic thought is unlikely to generate broad prosperity.What is worse, the government clearly has no serious transitional plan for managing the mine when the lease expires on 18th April, less than a fortnight away. To prevent a damaging limbo from developing when Gold Fields walks away and stops paying employees and contractors, it is now scrambling to draft a detailed mining lease, negotiate it with E&P, and send it to Parliament for ratification. All within eleven days. What kind of serious drafting, debating, and ratification is possible in eleven days?Suppose that does not happen. Maybe because, for instance, opposition members of Parliament demand greater transparency about a tender process whose details had not been publicly disclosed, or insist on scrutinising the fiscal terms (royalties, state equity, and other variables to be demanded of E&P). We would then face the very real prospect of the government having to meet worker obligations and assume other costly liabilities from 18th April until the lease is ratified. What a shambles.And this is merely my preliminary comment. If the government continues to refuse to publish the full tender results, we shall use the Right to Information (RTI) channel to trace the reasoning. If we are dissatisfied with what we find, we shall consider whether the courts ought to examine whether the purpose of the tender framework in LI 2176, which is to generate genuine competition, has been met within the deeper meaning of Article 296 of the Constitution.Being Smart About a National Champions StrategyEven supposing we are prepared to overlook certain good governance requirements for the greater good of expanding Ghanaian ownership of our mines. Something I know the vast majority of Ghanaians clearly support. We must still be intelligent about how we go about it.I have sympathy for the argument that Engineers & Planners, after three decades in contract-mining, qualify for consideration as a national champion. But even so, there is a smart way to execute that logic.A genuinely effective national champion strategy builds companies that are rugged, resilient, innovative, and agile. Companies equipped to go out and conquer, and bring glory home. Think Huawei, Samsung, Tencent, and Reliance Industries.With no disrespect intended, and with genuine affection for E&P: despite nearly three decades of operations in Ghana and commendable growth in scale, the company has so far not held on to overseas contracts – not in Liberia, where it had a very public and acrimonious parting with ArcelorMittal over the Yekepa iron ore project in Nimba County, and not elsewhere.Tough love is the most critical ingredient in the formula for creating national champions. Companies being groomed to hoist the national flag must be held to tight standards. If corner-cutting advantages them too heavily at home, they will falter overseas. The real journey towards national champion status still lies ahead, and how we go about grooming Engineers & Planners for that race will be decisive.We must also be mindful of an elementary lesson from sport. No athlete is groomed from the top downwards. One starts on the learning slopes before mastering the mountaintops.A truly intelligent national champion’s strategy would have focused on getting E&P aligned on all fours with a multinational that has long experience managing the full 360-degree scope of mining before thrusting it into one of the most complicated geologies in the region.Instead, the entire process of ushering E&P into the big mining leagues has involved heavily antagonising a major player – Gold Fields – in an industry where, despite fierce competition, the large players share intelligence and tend to subscribe to the same risk-management playbook.Gold Fields’ Tarkwa licence renewal reportedly hangs in the balance at the very same time that E&P is demanding $740 million from the South African mining giant. It is worth noting that the amount E&P claims Gold Fields has shortchanged it over the years of contract mining at Tarkwa and Damang is roughly, and curiously, the mid-point of the estimated capital range required to revamp operations at Damang. That these claims coexist with a documented failure by E&P to fully service a loan from Gold Fields for equipment used in the Damang contract operations clouds the picture further.The whole saga raises pointed questions about the financial burden being placed on E&P in this abrupt transformation from contract miner serving cash-rich multinationals to a standalone mine owner.Are We Pushing E&P Too Far Too Fast?I have conceded many times that nothing would make most Ghanaians prouder than seeing a homegrown company like E&P transform from a rock-hewer for large foreign corporations into a fully-fledged gold mine owner, responsible for the entire spectrum of operations.As I said during the Black Volta saga, sometimes how you do something overshadows what you are trying to do. The perennial challenge of Ghana (what I call katanomics) is our tendency to fixate on the “what” without adequately thinking through the “how.”Recall the katanomic reason the government gave for refusing to renew Gold Fields’ lease. It argued, in essence, that Gold Fields was dragging its feet because it was struggling to identify enough profitable gold to justify further investment.To appreciate the full weight of that claim, we need to trace a quick history of the Damang mine.A Short Commercial & Engineering History of DamangCommercial production began in August 1997 from the main Damang pit. The deposit combines a near-surface, oxidised, relatively free-milling zone with a deeper primary sulphide zone bearing high-grade ore that requires significant depth to reach. Through the 1990s and early 2000s, extraction from the upper portions was straightforward.By the early 2010s, the accessible ore had run out. Production halted at the main Damang Pit Cutback (DPCB) in 2013, and operations shifted to smaller satellite pits (e.g. Huni, Lima South, Kwesi Gap, Tomento East, and Amoanda) that offered lower grades, higher strip ratios, and diminishing throughput. By 2015, Damang’s output had fallen to levels that raised genuine questions about its long-term viability as a standalone asset. Gold Fields conducted a strategic review that year, examined placing the mine under care and maintenance, but concluded that the cost of redundancies and the risk of illegal artisanal invasion made that route both economically and politically untenable.The only commercially credible path forward was a major cutback into the deeper orebody. In specific terms, cutting back both the eastern and western walls of the DPCB to a total depth of 341 metres, comprising a 265-metre prestrip followed by a further 76-metre deepening to access the full ore column. That engineering logic underpinned the 2016 Development Agreement with the government.Gold Fields announced in October 2016 that it planned to spend approximately $1.4 billion to revitalise the mine. The then Minister’s memorandum to Parliament supporting ratification of the Development Agreement cited a considerably lower figure of USD 550 million over the life of the mine. The Development Agreement itself was silent on the precise commitment.When the Minerals Commission initially tried to justify its reluctance to renew the Gold Fields agreement, it suggested the company had failed to honour its investment undertaking. Gold Fields responded by evidencing total investment from 2017 to September 2024 of $1.714 billion.Confronted with those figures, the Commission pivoted to the technically illiterate claim that Gold Fields had “failed to declare reserves”. But this interpretation is derived from the company’s own internal standards, not the regulations. Thus, conveniently overlooking the fact that under Ghanaian law, a company may still acquire or renew a lease on the basis of declared resources (rather than reserves) alone.One figure in the investment breakdown caught my attention: capital waste stripping costs of $327.5 million from 2017 to 2022. This was money spent moving the roughly 21 million tonnes of waste rock required to complete the cutback to target depth. Capital waste stripping yields no gold. It is pure excavation expenditure incurred before any ore can be mined.After that massive haul, it was hardly surprising that Gold Fields did not immediately commit to a further capital programme for the next phase of mine life extension. The risk profile of Damang spoke for itself.The cutback programme was designed to reach the base of the pit at 341 metres, exposing the high-grade Tarkwa Phyllite ore that justified the original investment. By late 2023, the accessible ore in the Huni and Lima, Kwesi Gap satellite pits had been substantially mined out in line with the 2023 operating plan.Mining had reached a natural endpoint within the existing mine design. Any continuation required the next phase of pit development. Gold Fields chose instead to process stockpiles while conducting further studies.There is also the matter of the East Tailings Storage Facility (ETSF), decommissioned and placed under rehabilitation in early 2018 after the new Far East TSF came online. It sits physically adjacent to the eastern wall of the main Damang pit, its western embankment abutting the pit wall itself.The proposed next phase of mining – specifically the “mini cutback” of the Damang East pit that forms Phase 3 of the life extension plan – would require blasting and excavation immediately beneath and adjacent to that western embankment. Gold Fields’ engineers identified this as a material geotechnical risk: the pit itself could collapse if operations proceeded without first physically relocating a portion of the decommissioned ETSF. That relocation is a complex, expensive, and time-consuming exercise requiring separate regulatory approvals from the EPA, the Water Resources Commission, and the Minerals Commission, together with a full Environmental and Social Impact Assessment.Until those geo-engineering studies and operational preparations were complete, it was technically impossible to determine how much gold could be profitably extracted.Meanwhile, with active mining suspended, the open pits began filling with groundwater. Restarting pit mining after an extended pause demands a substantial dewatering programme that can take months, generate significant environmental compliance obligations, and represent a capital outlay that precedes any gold production. This compounds the investment burden for any restart.I do not discount Gold Fields’ other preoccupations during this period. Such as the failed Yamana Gold merger bid of 2022, the delays and enormous cost overruns at Salares Norte in Chile, operational challenges at ageing assets in Australia and South Africa, and the bandwidth consumed by the newly acquired Windfall project in Canada.But for this analysis, what matters is the commercial risk profile of the Damang life extension project. The projected $500 to $600 million is a conservative estimate, given that the project had not even reached the feasibility study stage by 2023, the ETSF relocation had not been costed, and operating cost per ounce had already risen well above the group average.True, Gold Fields’ own studies indicated that the investment rationale improves materially when gold prices exceed $1,400 per ounce. That threshold has long since been surpassed – gold has now broken through $5,000 per ounce on several occasions – so the economic case for Damang has strengthened considerably. The curious thing is that Gold Fields’ analysts remained cautious about full commitment even as prices cleared $2,000. Those close to the government’s decision-making have attributed this simply to Gold Fields benchmarking Damang against other assets in its portfolio and opting to prioritise less complex projects. E&P, the reasoning goes, will suffer none of those inhibitions.But the outstanding geological, engineering, and environmental challenges at Damang are real, and their implications for workers and communities dependent on the mine’s income cannot be wished away.Where is the Feasibility Study?Per the pre-feasibility study (PFS) completed in 2024, Damang’s mineral resources could support growth to 1.5 million ounces of reserves, with mine life extended by a further eight years to 2032. The ramp-up would follow this trajectory: Phase 1 entails mining of the Nyame, Tamang, and Juno pits alongside an extended raise of the Far East TSF and a Tamang Stream diversion. Phase 2 adds the Amoanda pit. Phase 3 incorporates the mini cutback of the main pit and construction of a new tailings storage facility – the critical component requiring ETSF relocation.Gold Fields was expected to progress to a full feasibility study in 2025. Feasibility studies for major open-pit cutbacks typically take 12 to 18 months and require independent geological work, metallurgical testwork, geotechnical assessment, environmental scoping, and detailed cost engineering.What most people have yet to grasp is that Damang currently has no bankable or definitive feasibility study. E&P could not have conducted one while it was a subcontractor. And the tender committee studiously and conspicuously neglected to discuss feasibility. It is, therefore, wholly perplexing that the tender required bidders to demonstrate committed financing. No bank will issue binding funding guarantees for a project at this stage of development.This elementary fact appears to have eluded the strategists and analysts advising the government on Damang.The Minerals Commission’s own licensing guidance makes a feasibility study a mandatory step in the process. Embedded within the standard procedure, between the Commission’s recommendation to the Minister and the Minister’s 60-day decision window, is a requirement for a Feasibility Study Committee to review the applicant’s feasibility report.This is not discretionary. A mining lease application must be accompanied by a feasibility report, reviewed by a dedicated committee before the Minister decides whether to grant the lease. E&P did not – and could not – have produced one in the seven days between the tender notice and the 31st March 2026 submission deadline. And, at any rate, it had no right to.What was submitted was a development proposal. A document described in the Tender Committee’s report as “proposals for the development of the mine, including measures intended to extend the life of mine beyond ten years” (versus the eight years that Gold Fields’ experienced geological team considered feasible). A proposal is not a feasibility study. It falls short of the Commission’s own licensing procedure.I accept that the resource determination step has been completed, with the level confirmed at approximately 2.96 million ounces of gold. What a feasibility study must answer is the engineering and economic question: can those resources be extracted from this specific orebody, using this specific mine design, with this specific capital programme, at a cost that makes the operation commercially viable across a range of plausible gold price scenarios? Ghana’s royalties, tax take, and interest in stable employment and community development all depend on a competent answer to that question.The Minister cannot direct the Minerals Commission to proceed to grant the lease without running afoul of both due process and best practice.Under Act 703, the programme of mineral operations – the detailed plan of what the leaseholder will actually do – must exist and must be lodged. A mining lease without an approved programme of mineral operations is a title without a plan. E&P’s tender submission was a high-level development proposal, not a detailed programme of the kind the Minerals Commission’s licensing procedure contemplates.The Minister has no power to instruct a technical agency like the Minerals Commission – even one whose independence has been questioned – to override the mandatory prerequisite of a satisfactory feasibility study. If he insists on doing so, Parliament should call him to order.Furthermore, Environmental Assessment Regulations require an Environmental Impact Assessment for mining operations. Damang has an existing EIA covering its prior operations. The proposed new programme – involving ETSF relocation, stream diversion, new pit designs in the Nyame, Tamang, Juno, and Amoanda areas, and new tailings storage facility construction, constitutes a material project change requiring either a fresh EIA or a formal amendment to the existing one. Either route must be approved by the EPA before new mining activities commence. That process takes a minimum of twelve to twenty-four months in Ghana’s regulatory environment, with mandatory public participation, stakeholder consultation, and technical review.Likewise, the Water Resources Commission Act requires water use permits for mine dewatering. The open pits at Damang have been filling with water since active mining ceased in December 2023. Restarting pit mining requires a dewatering programme, which in turn requires valid water use permits, either obtained afresh or novated from Gold Fields, to the satisfaction of the Water Resources Commission.And that is before we even reach Phase 3, which requires physically relocating a portion of the decommissioned ETSF. No engineering design for the relocation has been completed to a feasibility study standard. No regulatory approval has been obtained. This is a geotechnical, environmental, and safety-critical exercise that cannot be shortcut.What Does All This Mean for E&P?Put simply – and this is what makes it so alarming – E&P can do little more than process the few stockpiles left behind by Gold Fields for however long – likely well over a year – these regulatory and technical processes grind forward, unless the government intends to cut corners. But corner-cutting of the kind the Minister appears to be directing opens E&P up to potentially devastating legal challenges at any point during its operations.That is the central point of this essay: the Minister appears to be setting E&P up to fail.Ghana’s Long Record of Setting National Champions Up to FailGhana’s “buga buga” approach to national champion strategy is not, sadly, without precedent.In pharmaceuticals, the country channelled millions of dollars to local companies during the COVID-19 pandemic to produce chloroquine. Only for the therapy to be discredited shortly as an ineffective treatment for the disease.In the petroleum industry, the country attempted to force-merge a producing Swiss-Italian oil field with an unproven field owned by a Ghanaian entrepreneur, with the Ghanaian company awarded 70% of the combined asset. The result was embarrassment at international arbitration.In aviation, the country conferred “national airline status” on a start-up entity that could not even obtain an Air Operator Certificate, and set it the goal of running transatlantic flights from day one. If that were a realistic ambition from the outset, would Africa World Airlines not already have ventured there – and would they not have been more deserving of the incentives on offer?And so on and so forth.Ghana Must Raise Its GameI have no doubt about the nationalist sentiments driving Ghana towards greater local ownership of its assets. Indeed, that sentiment is what the political class is riding.But as the katanomics framework reminds us, sound political vision does not automatically translate into sound policy execution.I hope the government will this time take a step back and open the process to a genuinely nationalist conversation about how to do resource nationalism properly.If it shows that willingness, all of us will put our shoulders to the wheel in pursuit of that worthy objective.