Sam Jonah: Acheampong's 1972 mining reforms gave Ghanaians control of their own soil for the first time

Business titan and University of Cape Coast Chancellor Sir Sam Jonah has delivered a striking tribute to former military Head of State General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, crediting him with fundamentally reshaping who benefits from Ghana's vast natural resource wealth. Speaking at the Second General I.K. Acheampong Memorial Lecture in Accra on Friday, Sir Sam argued that Acheampong's economic nationalism in the early 1970s created opportunities for an entire generation of Ghanaian professionals — himself included.

What Acheampong's government actually did

In 1972, the Acheampong-led National Redemption Council introduced policies that gave the Ghanaian state controlling interests in major extractive companies operating in the country, most notably Ashanti Goldfields Corporation and the Consolidated African Selection Trust. The move was a deliberate assertion of economic sovereignty — but crucially, it was not an outright nationalisation that expelled foreign investors.

Sir Sam was careful to draw that distinction. The government retained foreign partners, along with their capital and technical expertise, but brought them under management agreements that placed ultimate decision-making power in Ghanaian hands. Three non-negotiable conditions were attached: company head offices had to be relocated to Accra, the state had to hold the controlling voice in management, and a Ghanaian professional had to be installed as deputy managing director — with an explicit expectation that they would eventually rise to the top position.

"For the first time since the Portuguese landed at Elmina, the majority of the wealth beneath Ghanaian soil belonged to Ghanaians," Sir Sam told the audience, invoking more than five centuries of history to underline the significance of the shift.

A personal story that illustrates a national transformation

Sir Sam's tribute carried particular weight because his own career trajectory was directly shaped by those reforms. He revealed that he joined Ashanti Goldfields in 1969 as an underground miner at the company's Obuasi operations — three years before the government acquired its controlling stake. When the new ownership and training requirements came into force, they opened a door that eventually led him all the way to the chief executive's office.

"In due course, I was that Ghanaian. So were many others, in many companies. A whole generation of Ghanaian engineers, geologists and accountants came up through the door that decree opened," he said.

The personal anecdote is a powerful reminder that policy choices in extractive industries do not merely shift percentages on a balance sheet — they determine who gets trained, who gets promoted, and who ultimately leads institutions that drive national development.

Why it matters for Ghana

Ghana's relationship with its mineral wealth remains one of the most debated issues in the country's political and economic life. Decades after Acheampong's reforms, questions about local ownership, the terms of mining licences, and the share of revenues retained in-country continue to dominate conversations in Parliament, civil society and academia.

Sir Sam's lecture arrives at a time when those debates are as live as ever. Ghana has long grappled with the so-called "resource curse" paradox — being richly endowed in gold, bauxite, manganese and, more recently, oil and gas, yet struggling to translate that endowment into broad-based prosperity. The reforms of 1972 represent one of the more concrete historical attempts to address that gap by ensuring Ghanaians held the controlling voice rather than merely providing the labour.

The lecture also raises an implicit challenge to contemporary policymakers: what institutional mechanisms exist today to guarantee that Ghanaian professionals rise to the top of extractive industries, and that strategic decisions are taken by people accountable to Ghanaian citizens? Sir Sam's framing of Acheampong's insistence that head offices be in Accra — so that decision-makers "had to look Ghanaians in the eye" — is a pointed one, particularly at a time when debates about beneficial ownership and corporate accountability in mining are intensifying across Africa.

• Acheampong's 1972 reforms gave Ghana controlling stakes in Ashanti Goldfields and other major firms.
• Foreign partners were retained under management agreements, preserving capital and technical expertise.
• Sir Sam Jonah credits the policy with producing a generation of Ghanaian mining professionals.