A big legal battle over a $100 million gold mine in northwest Ghana has shown growing tension between foreign mining investors and well-connected local businesses.
At the center of the fight is the Black Volta gold project, a highly desired and mostly undeveloped site in the Wa-Lawra gold belt. It is now caught in a bitter ownership fight between a local mining company called Engineers and Planners, known as E&P, and the foreign investors who back Azumah Resources.
The argument has drawn a lot of attention because E&P is led by Ibrahim Mahama, the brother of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama. Aside from the family ties to the president, the standoff serves as an important test case for how safe foreign investments are at a time when Ghana is changing its mining rules to keep more resource wealth inside the country.
The Source of the Friction
The argument goes back to a 2023 deal. According to E&P, Azumah’s owners offered the company the right to buy the Black Volta asset for $100 million. To support its claim, E&P got a $120 million loan from a West African development bank in July 2025 specifically meant to pay for the purchase.
