Greetings from Accra. The Accra Almanac introduces itself this Sunday with a week that happened to deliver the kind of political theatre a columnist dreams about and dreads in equal measure. Much to observe. Let us begin.

Damang Returns to the State

Yesterday, Saturday April 18, at the expiry of a twelve-month non-renewable lease extension, the Damang Mine reverted to the Government of Ghana at the close of Gold Fields’ operatorship. This is a significant moment and I want to mark it properly.

Gold Fields invested approximately $5 billion across its Damang and Tarkwa operations since the year 2000. It contributed $2.9 billion to the Ghanaian state through taxes, royalties, and dividends. It employed over 7,000 Ghanaians — 99 percent of its workforce was national. By any measurement, this was a functioning, profitable, tax-paying foreign operator. It has now handed back the asset and walked to its other Ghanaian operation at Tarkwa.

The question for the next decade is whether Engineers and Planners Limited — the preferred Ghanaian bidder recommended by the Minerals Commission’s Tender Committee with a 93.15 percent technical evaluation score — can run Damang as a sovereign operation with the nine more years of production the feasibility study projects. The financing is reportedly there ($505 million against a $500 million government threshold). The technical capacity will be tested. The Ghanaian state’s capacity to manage a major mining asset without foreign operator support will be tested harder.

I am cautiously hopeful about this transition. I am also realistic. Resource sovereignty is a cause I have supported for thirty years in this column and its predecessors, and I have watched Ghana develop the technical and institutional capacity to handle assets of this scale. We are not the Ghana of 1995 anymore. We have credible mining engineers, credible operations managers, credible governance structures. If we handle Damang well, it is a proof-of-concept for how newly-asserted resource sovereignty can work in the twenty-first century. If we handle it badly, we set back the cause by a decade.

Watch this one closely. The first twelve months will tell us most of what we need to know.

Free Primary Healthcare: A Genuine Flagship, With Honest Questions

President Mahama launched the Free Primary Healthcare Programme on April 15 at Shai Osudoku District Hospital in Dodowa, then followed up with a second event at the same hospital yesterday. The initial rollout covers 150 of Ghana’s 261 districts, prioritising underserved communities. Full national coverage is targeted for 2028.

The programme is structurally meaningful. Twelve service areas, from cancer screening to mental health counselling to menstrual hygiene management, are now available at CHPS compounds, health centres, and polyclinics at no cost, without NHIS registration, using only the Ghana Card. The financing is domestic — GH¢1.5 billion initial investment, about GH¢1.2 billion annually thereafter — drawn from oil revenues via the Annual Budget Funding Amount, NHIA allocations, and the restructured National Health Insurance Fund. The Ministry of Health budget is not being raided to pay for it.

The NPP is arguing, predictably, that the initiative is “largely a repackaging of existing NHIS services.” This is a rhetorically convenient position and a substantively thin one. The NHIS requires registration, periodic renewal, and active card-holding status. Free Primary Healthcare does not. For the substantial portion of Ghanaians — particularly rural — who fell out of the NHIS system because of administrative friction, this difference is the entire point. A policy that removes the administrative barrier is not the same policy with a new name. It is a different policy.

That said, I have three honest questions about delivery.

First: Staffing. The programme depends on community health workers, volunteers, and the existing CHPS network. The existing CHPS network is already stretched. Where are the additional bodies coming from, at what salary, and with what training? The Ministry’s announcement says implementation details “will be announced in the coming weeks.” Translation: they are still being worked out. That is honest but it is also a risk.

Second: Sustainability. The GH¢1.2 billion annual figure assumes current oil revenues and a functioning ABFA. Both are subject to external shocks. What happens to the programme if oil prices drop 30 percent in 2027? This is not a hypothetical — it happened in 2020.

Third: The referral backbone. Primary care is free; everything beyond it still runs through the NHIS. If the NHIS side is not simultaneously strengthened, the FPHC becomes a screening programme that identifies conditions it cannot treat. Screening without treatment capacity is worse than no screening, because it creates a pipeline of diagnosed patients without a path to care.

I want the programme to succeed. I believe the intent is genuine. The execution risks are real and should be openly discussed, not treated as opposition talking points.

The Cocoa Farmers, Six Months Later

Cocoa farmers have reportedly still not been paid for beans delivered six months ago. Let that sentence sit for a moment.

Cocoa is one of Ghana’s foundational export sectors. The cocoa farmer is one of the foundational figures of Ghanaian rural life. A six-month delay in payment to farmers who have already delivered product to COCOBOD is not a technical glitch. It is a failure of the most basic obligation the state has to its most productive rural citizens.

I do not know whether this is a Ministry of Food and Agriculture problem, a Bank of Ghana liquidity problem, a COCOBOD structural problem, or all three. I know that when the cocoa farmer is unpaid, his school-fee cycle breaks, his input financing for the next season breaks, and his children’s lives become measurably harder.

I hope this is being treated with the urgency it deserves. Based on the public silence from the relevant agencies, I am not confident it is.

On the Arrest of Maxwell Kofi Jumah

The NPP’s Ashanti Region Communications Director, Maxwell Kofi Jumah, was arrested this past week. The NPP has framed this as political intimidation. The government has not yet offered a detailed public response.

I will say what I have said in similar moments in previous administrations, regardless of which party was in power.

A democracy is measured by how its opposition is treated. If the arrest of Mr. Jumah is based on a credible charge and a transparent process, it is within the ordinary functioning of the law. If it is based on speech, political activity, or party function, it is a problem regardless of which party is in opposition.

The difference matters. The public has a right to the specifics: what is the charge, what is the evidence, who approved the action, and what is the timeline. Silence from the Attorney-General’s office on matters like this corrodes public trust faster than almost any other institutional failure.

I await the particulars. I hope they come quickly and clearly.

Closing

A mine returns to the state. A flagship policy launches. A farmer waits six months for payment. An opposition communications director sits in custody. A country continues.

Ghana is at a juncture that historians will revisit. I will continue writing about it — week by week, with the care the moment deserves.

— The Accra Almanac