Kwame Baffoe, the outspoken New Patriary Party (NPP) Bono Regional Chairman widely known as Abronye DC, has thrown his weight behind indigenous ownership of Ghana’s mineral wealth, naming businessman Ibrahim Mahama as proof that local investors can out-deliver the foreign multinationals long dominant in the sector.
In a striking departure from his past posture toward the businessman, Abronye argued that Engineers & Planners — the company controlled by Ibrahim Mahama — has delivered more tangible development at Damang than Newmont has managed in the Ahafo area across two decades of operation. The comparison, he said, is not rhetorical: it is visible on the ground in the form of infrastructure, jobs and community investment.
A Reversal Years in the Making
What makes the endorsement remarkable is its history. Abronye openly acknowledged that he was once among the loudest voices working to block Ibrahim Mahama’s business interests from accessing the Nyinahin bauxite concession in the Ashanti Region — a fight that erupted into open political and legal controversy in 2017.
At the time, Abronye challenged the mining lease granted to Exton Cubic Group Limited, which had engaged Engineers & Planners to carry out prospecting activities at Nyinahin. His opposition helped shape one of the early, combustible debates of the Akufo-Addo administration over who should control Ghana’s strategic minerals.
His latest remarks therefore mark a clear and public U-turn — an admission, in effect, that the businessman he once fought has since demonstrated the very capacity to develop national resources that Abronye had previously doubted.
The Case for Local Control
At the heart of Abronye’s argument is a straightforward proposition: when Ghanaian entrepreneurs with the capital and competence to invest are entrusted with the country’s mineral resources, a larger share of the economic benefit stays at home — in wages, in local procurement, in community projects and in retained national wealth.
He contrasted this with the record of multinational miners, whose operations, he suggested, have too often left host communities with degraded land and thin development gains despite decades of extraction. By pitting Engineers & Planners against Newmont, Abronye deliberately put that critique into measurable terms — inviting Ghanaians to compare outcomes rather than slogans.
