We’ve been deceived – Queenmother, others slam McDan’s Electrochem takeover of West Africa’s largest salt deposit

Naana Korleki Korley I is an angry, frustrated woman with a lot of disappointment in heart. As divisional queenmother of the Terkperbiawe Clan in Ada, she had high hopes when she lent her support for the takeover of the Ada Songor Salt Project by Electrochem Ghana Limited, a company owned by business magnate, Daniel McKorley, popularly known as McDan.

She was part of a delegation from the Ada Traditional Council, comprising 10 clan heads and landowners, who went to the Jubilee House in June 2020 to seek the endorsement of President Akufo-Addo for the deal with McDan’s company.

That day, I was excited. I thought we had found an investor who had Ada at heart.” Naana Korleki recalls. “But I didn’t know it was someone who wanted to take everything from us and own it.”

As a custodian of the Terkperbiawe clan’s cultural heritage, Naana Korleki superintends over ancestral practices tied to the Songor Lagoon, which, according to history, is the ancestral property of the Tekpebiawe Clan. She is very frustrated and disappointed that the deal with McDan’s company has failed to bear the fruits she and other clan heads in Ada expected.

To begin with, she is unhappy that Electrochem has taken more than the Traditional Council gave them under their investment Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). According to the MOU, the company was supposed to be granted the Songor Salt Project and adjoining lands, measuring 12,428 acres. However, when the deal went to Parliament for ratification, as required by law, the legislature increased the concession to 39,126 (158.34 km²) acres for reasons that are yet unclear. Even the two Members of Parliament (MPs) from the Ada area are at a loss as to why the concession was increased. Christian Corletey Otuteye, the MP for Sege – the area that has the larger part of the Songor lagoon – claims he was left in the dark in proceedings leading to the ratification of the deal.

“Nobody knew of it until one day it was brought to Parliament for ratification,” he says. On the day of ratification, he was not in the chamber, leading many of his constituents to question how he was representing their interest in parliament when he was unavailable to make his voice heard on such an important issue concerning their livelihoods. The issue cost him dearly as he lost the primaries to contest for re-election in December.

“My people think I am the cause but the starting point of this whole thing is the Traditional Council,” he says. “I lost the primaries because of this. It is a very serious issue.”

The other lawmaker from the area, Comfort Doeyo-Cudjoe, MP for Ada, was in the chamber when the deal was ratified in less than 20 minutes. But she also cannot explain why the agreed concession was increased from 12,428 to 39,126 acres.

Having had the concession more than tripled inexplicably by parliament, McDan and Electrochem appear to have added an extra 2,000 acres on their own, now claiming on their website and in interviews with The Fourth Estate that they own a 41,000-acre salt concession in the Ada area – basically the entirety of the Ada Songor Lagoon, the largest salt deposit in West Africa, according to Third World Network (TWN Africa), an NGO.

This claim to the whole of the Songor Lagoon has ignited sporadic violent clashes in the area, leading to deaths, injuries, displacements, and destruction as the company has blocked thousands of small-scale salt miners from gaining access to the lagoon. 

“I was getting calls all over that the company is brutalizing my people anytime they go to the Songor lagoon to work,” says Naana Korleki. “And when I asked, they told me the company said it now owns the entire lagoon. And I said ‘no’, because we have not given all the lagoon to anyone.”

Blocked from using the lagoon, and sometimes getting severely beaten for daring to go near it, the thousands of small-scale salt miners who depend on it for their livelihoods are left in despair and economic hardship.

Pain & hardship 

For decades, Vida Wormenor and her neighbors had relied on a delicate balance between small-scale salt mining in the dry season and farming in the wet season. As rainfall decreases from November to March, the water in the lagoon evaporates, leaving behind crystallized salt — Ada’s lifeblood for generations. This seasonal cycle has sustained entire communities in Ada, providing income from salt mining during the dry season to fund farming activities when the rains return from April to October.

Vida, like many others in Ada, once skilfully navigated this path to earning a living, ensuring her family’s survival. But today, she says, since Electrochem took control of the lagoon in 2020, their economic prospects have been put at grave risk.

The takeover has left us with nothing,” Vida says, as she speaks to The Fourth Estate on her seven-acre farmland, only one acre of which is cultivated with pepper. The remaining six acres lay uncultivated, choked by weeds. Without the supplemental income from salt mining, Vida can not afford to hire labour or buy the necessary inputs to fully cultivate her farmland.

“If I had money, labourers would be helping me,” she says, her voice heavy with sadness. “This year, I am not able to afford a bag of fertilizer. I had to contribute [money] and buy with other farmers to share.”

The impact of the diminished economic activity on Vida’s family has been devastating. Her three children, who have completed Senior High School, cannot further their education because she can not pay for tuition fees and other necessities.

“If we could still mine salt from the lagoon, my children would be in university,” Vida laments. “We hear [Electrochem] claim they are doing a lot of things for us, but we can’t see it. They have made things difficult for us.”

Her frustrations and anguish are shared by thousands of others in the salt production chain in Ada, including salt sellers, loaders, and transporters who feel the brunt of Electrochem’s takeover of the Songor Lagoon.

Many others have been left economically handicapped in the Ada area – those who depended indirectly on the operations and activities of the small-scale salt miners. Agnes Amedor, a kenkey seller, says her business is on the brink of collapse after 26 years of steady success.

“We used to sell out before dusk,” Agnes says. “Now, I struggle to sell anything. The miners are gone, and so are the customers. If I cook [in large quantities] now, I’ll just have to throw [most of] it out for the goats to eat. We were many and before sunrise, we would be busily selling but now all the kenkey sellers have stopped except me because if they cook there is nobody to buy.”

Unpaid entitlements

Amidst the economic deprivation, the people of Ada, including Naana Korleki, the Queen mother of the Terkperbiawe clan, also accuse McDan and Electrochem of failing to fulfill promises and obligations in the MOU with the Traditional Council.

Among other things, the company promised to employ indigenes, provide educational scholarships, construct schools, build palaces and offices for chiefs and clan heads as well as sponsor the annual Asafotufiami festival. Except for the sponsorship of the festival since 2022, most of the other promises have not been fulfilled. The people lament the company’s failure to provide the jobs promised.

“They say they have employed thousands but those of us working here are not up to 300,” an Electrochem employee says on condition of anonymity. “It is a complete lie.”

The employee told The Fourth Estate that many of those employed are wary of the conditions under which they work.

“Which law says I should be working for this number of years as a casual worker? But if you say it, you are out of here,” he says. “With this Songor takeover by Electrochem, we are suffering. But because there is no work here in Ada, we can’t speak the truth.”

On the issue of royalties, a number of clan heads complain that Electrochem has not made any payments yet, even though it has been actively mining salt in the Songor Lagoon for almost four years. A clan head who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said he and his colleagues have only been paid ground rent.

“The [money] that came was not royalty,” the clan head says. “It was ground rent. The Council did not reveal the exact amount that came but they told me my clan’s share was 15% [which amounted] to 144,000 cedis.”

After taking over the Songor Lagoon, Electrochem, which was incorporated in 2017, two years before McDan signed the deal with the Ada Traditional Council, also promised to construct community pans, from which the indigenous people could mine for salt. The pans are basically huge dugouts that can be filled with salt water (or brine) from the lagoon.

With evaporation, brine crystalises into salt. The company claims to have constructed seven of such community pans, but The Fourth Estate only found four, three of which are actively in use. But there are over 30 communities that depend on salt mining and over 15,000 small-scale salt producers in the area, according to the Ada Songor Lagoon Association (ASLA). If the community pans are meant to make up for their lack of access to the lagoon, then even the seven pans the company claims to have constructed will be woefully inadequate.

The Ada Songor Lagoon Association (ASLA), Dangme East Salt Producers Association (DESPA), and other small scale salt miners say they do not want the community pans. Instead, they demand access to the lagoon itself while Electrochem operates the ersthwhile Songor Salt Project, which is what the MOU with the Traditional Council stipulated, according to Naana Korlekie and the other clan heads who pleaded anonymity for fear of victimisation.

“If nothing is done for peace to prevail, there will be more deaths in Ada,” Abraham Tetteh Ahumah, the spokesman for ASLA, warns. “We will never allow [McDan] to take the whole surface, which is our livelihood. He should remain at the Songor Salt Project because that was what was given to him, we don’t need community pans or whatever.”

Electrochem’s response

Electrochem, on the other hand, insists that it is committed to constructing more pans – that is if the communities will allow its employees to work and not attack them. “These clashes normally affect us in advancing with the construction of the community pans,” Bernard Korley, the company spokesman, says.

Korley also refuted claims that the company has not fulfilled its promises, insisting that it has honoured its obligations as stated in the MOU.

The company has fulfilled its promises as part of its duty so far as giving back to the society and allodial owners is concerned,” Korley says.

The Fourth Estate sought comment from the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, which facilitated the grant of the concession to Electrochem. Officials at the ministry turned down our requests for interviews.

Analysts and observers believe the displacement, anxiety, deaths and brutality in Ada since Electrochem took over the lagoon and its rich salt deposit would have all been avoided if the government had gone by the dictates of a master plan developed in the 1980s. That plan was developed by a commission of inquiry that was set up in 1985 to investigate clashes between the indigenes of Ada and large commercial salt miners, which culminated in the fatal shooting of a pregnant woman. The plan stipulated that no single entity should be granted absolute control over the Songor Lagoon.

Dr Yao Graham, National Coordinator of Third World Network Africa, has been strident in his criticism of the Electrochem deal, accusing the government of undermining both the legal and economic rights of the people of Ada.

The master plan, he says, was not “designed for the Ada people to depend on the patronage of a company, but for them to have independent access to portions of the lagoon, with the same security and protection as any large-scale producer”.

Dr. Graham believes the Ada Songor area needs a local development plan aligned using the original vision in the master plan. He believes the Electrochem deal needs to be terminated.

“A revocation of those leases and returning to a point where the all-inclusive vision of the masterplan becomes the framework for any entity in the Songor”, he says, will be the first step.

He argues that resolving what he describes as a “travesty” against the Ada people requires “a government that rises above the interest of a clique, with a genuine public interest notion”.

“Within that notion,” he says, “cronies and political parties can still make their money, and everyone benefits. The cronyism has narrowed the lens to where illegality can trump everything.”

Economist and political risk analyst, Dr. Theo Acheampong, also says that the indigenes of Ada should not be totally cut off from the lagoon.

“The community has to benefit—it’s about earning more than just direct jobs,” Dr. Acheampong stresses.

He believes that when the right policies are in place to develop and sustainably exploit the salt deposit in Ada in consultation with the people, the area could be one of the biggest salt-producing hubs in Africa.

---