Ghana Gold Dispute: President’s Brother Defies Courts

GHANA · MINING

A Ghana gold dispute over the $100 million Black Volta mine has seen Engineers & Planners, run by the president’s brother Ibrahim Mahama, defy an international arbitration ruling and an English court order, investors say – with a final ICC judgment due in September.

Inside the Ghana gold dispute

The Black Volta project sits on the Wa-Lawra gold belt in Ghana’s Upper West Region, one of the country’s most promising undeveloped gold zones. Azumah Resources, an explorer backed largely by American private equity, acquired prospecting licences there in 2006, and mining concessions followed in 2014.

In arbitration documents reported by Semafor, Engineers & Planners – founded and run by Ibrahim Mahama, brother of President John Dramani Mahama – says Azumah’s shareholders offered it the right to acquire the project for $100 million in 2023. Azumah’s investors deny that, saying any acquisition rights depended on obligations the Ghanaian firm never fulfilled.

The investors accuse the company of seizing the site and forging signatures to push through a transfer of shares. E&P denies the allegations entirely.

Two courts, one refusal

The International Chamber of Commerce’s arbitration court, sitting in London, ordered E&P on October 23, 2025 to stop trespassing on, occupying or interfering with the Black Volta and Sankofa mine sites. On June 8 this year, the High Court of England and Wales found the company had failed to comply and allowed the award to be enforced as an English judgment.

Azumah’s investors say both rulings have been ignored. The underlying contracts were written under English law, which is why a Ghanaian mining row is being fought through London courtrooms.

The defence from E&P

“E&P is neither occupying the Black Volta Mines nor has it taken over the operations of the Mine or its resources,” Bobby Banson, a lawyer for the company, told Semafor. The firm has instructed its lawyers to seek to set aside the English order and dismisses the continuing proceedings as public-relations theatre.

E&P secured a $120 million loan from the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development in July 2025, funds it said were for acquiring the site. Representatives of both sides expect the ICC to deliver a final judgment at a hearing in September.

A familiar family name

The row lands on an already sensitive nerve. In April, Ghana’s minerals regulator passed over South Africa’s Gold Fields, which had operated the Damang mine for more than two decades, and handed the lease to E&P, while denying accusations of favouritism.

A government spokesman said the president recused himself from the Damang decision to avoid any conflict of interest. Opposition politicians have accused the administration of crony capitalism in its treatment of the president’s brother – accusations the government has repeatedly denied.

Why investors are watching Ghana

Ghana is Africa’s largest gold producer, and it is rewriting its mining rules in the middle of a historic gold price boom. New regulations reserve surface mining for wholly Ghanaian-owned firms, require at least half-local ownership underground, and link royalties to bullion prices on a sliding scale.

Australian miner Cassius Mining and Nasdaq-listed Blue Gold are separately pursuing arbitration claims against Ghanaian authorities worth hundreds of millions of dollars, allegations the state denies. Fresh from a $3 billion IMF bailout, the country can ill afford a rising risk premium on its flagship sector, as Semafor’s reporting makes plain.

A Daily Maverick opinion piece last month asked whether Ghana’s gold shake-up is resource nationalism or a fig leaf for state capture. September’s ruling will not settle that argument, but it will show whether court orders bind everyone equally in Africa’s gold heavyweight.

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