Extractive rearticulation and lithium governance in Ghana

The growing demand for critical minerals has positioned lithium at the center of global energy transition, raising questions about how expanding extraction is governed in resource-producing countries. This paper examines Ghana's Ewoyaa Lithium Project to analyze how established extractive relations are reorganized as mining becomes embedded within the political, institutional, and developmental imperatives of decarbonization. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, including interviews, community discussions, participant observation, and secondary literature, the study examines interactions among state institutions, affected communities, civil society actors, traditional authorities, and project proponents. The paper advances the concept of extractive rearticulation to explain how established extractive relations are reorganized and legitimized through the policies, institutions and narratives of the energy transition. The findings show that political contestation and institutional constraints generate governance uncertainty; stakeholder engagement expands procedural inclusion while providing limited influence over substantive decisions; and anticipated extraction constrains land use and livelihood investment before physical relocation or mineral production. Building on existing scholarship, the study applies and refines anticipatory dispossession to explain how prolonged uncertainty surrounding land acquisition, compensation, and project implementation constrains livelihood decisions before physical relocation or extraction. It identifies anticipatory dispossession as a material-temporal mechanism through which physical possession can persist while effective control over land and livelihood futures progressively narrows. The paper demonstrates how new critical mineral governance arrangements can coexist with enduring asymmetries in authority and risk, underscoring the need for stronger regulatory capacity, meaningful community influence, and livelihood protection throughout the pre-extraction phase.