“No one dare go there”: Community Perceptions and Livelihood Implications of the Militarized Securitization of a Large-Scale Mineral Concession in Northern Ghana

For the past two decades, there has been a growing global concern over the increasing pace and intensity of unregulated natural resource extraction across the Global South. In response to this international pressure, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have implemented securitization strategies to establish formal and effective statement control of access and rights to extract natural resources. A growing body of critical scholarship argues that these actions are counterproductive on their own terms and only serve to entrench the informal sector, deepen class divides, and protect foreign capital at the expense of domestic non-elite producers. In Ghana, national discourses about the environmental and social degradation have been used to justify formalization, criminalization, and militarization of informal gold mining, a sector which represents a significant portion of the country’s economy and workforce. This study uses focus group and key informant data to question national narratives through examining the perceived local impacts of informal small-scale mining in a newly emergent gold province, and consider the localized effects of the militarized securitization of a foreign large-scale mineral concession in this rural agrarian context. I contend that interactions between state security forces and community members generates livelihood constraints that manifest spatially in a “landscape of risk.” I conclude that the process of mineral securitization constitutes de facto enclosure of large portions of communities’ otherwise agricultural land, driving migration, food insecurity and poverty.

Author

• McDonald, Alexander A.

Language

• en

Keyword

• Ghana
• Galamsey
• Informality
• Natural Resource Governance
• Securitization
• Political Ecology

Date created

• 2023

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Geography

Degree

• M.S.

Advisor

• Rain, David

Committee Member(s)

• Kansanga, Moses M

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/2z10wq99k