Has there been a real ‘dialogue’ between Ghana and China?

Relations between two sovereign nations should be conducted on the basis that both are adults. Adults discuss the real issues that threaten to derail their relationships.

If they live closely together and an important fence that serves them both breaks down, they try to find realistic ways of repairing the damage. They – like children – offer to share their sweets.

The majority of the reports that I have read about the outcome of the talks between Vice-President Muhammadu Bawumia’s delegation and the Chinese Government ignored the elephant that must have been present in th room: “galamsey”.

On the other hand, a lot is made of what has been described as a “jackpot” of “$2 billion” that China has promised to Ghana to finance industries. The total possible financial outlays China has outlined, add up to a grand total of “$15 billion.” Which is absolutely fantastic.

But the very size of these loans and investments has created a fear on social media that the Chinese are out to dazzle Ghana with figures. The only time galamsey has so far been mentioned was in a report by CitiFM.

This said: China supports our galamsey fight – Bawumia “Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has downplayed possible concerns [that] the support Ghana is getting from China could compromise efforts against illegal mining, [in] which Chinese nationals are known to be heavily engaged. “According to him, China is happy with Ghana’s clamp- down on illegal mining, which has seen a significant number of Chinese nationals in Ghana arrested.

Dr. Bawumia was addressing the press after arriving from a four-day official visit to China, where Ghana, among other things, secured a funding facility worth up to $2 billion between a number of Ghanaian banks and the private sector, led by the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI). “[The Vice-President stated that] the issue of galamsey is not a China matter.

The issue is a galamsey (sic) matter and we deal with anybody who is involved in galamsey per our laws, and the Chinese are very happy with us enforcing our laws….They [the Chinese] won’t tell us how to enforce our laws, as we can’t tell them how to enforce their laws, and I think the fight against galamsey is no respecter of persons. …Regardless of where you come from… you are going to be dealt with, the same. [Dr Bawumia] added that the Chinese “are very supportive of us dealing with the galamsey issue, as per our laws and our laws are doing a wonderful job so far… I don’t think there is any link between the fight against galamsey and our support from China. China wants us to do the right thing,.” [he said].

“Chinese involvement with ….[Ghana] has been looked on with suspicion [by] the public, given [the fact that] Chinese nationals have gained notoriety for involvement in illegal mining activities, with a significant number of them currently [facing] cases in court…. High-profile donations made to the police and [the]Attorney General’s office from [the] Chinese [Ambassador to Ghana] were met with criticism from the public, [which] fears [that] the donations could compromise law enforcement stakeholders.

These concerns are not without merit, given that a former Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, [has] revealed [that]pressure was put on him [by] Chinese officials in Ghana when he tried to fight against illegal mining. According to Inusah Fuseini, the former Chinese Ambassador [to Ghana]tried different methods to get him to ease up on the fight against illegal miners within the small-scale mining sector.

Against such a background, I would have expected the two parties to issue a joint communique in which the problems posed by galamsey were officially recognised, and a firm commitment made to end it and implement a scheme of rehabilitation of the lands and waterways destroyed by galamsey. Certainly, it is not enough for Dr Bawumia to interpret for us, what was told to him verbally by the Chinese authorities.

Verbal assurances can be disavowed and that’s why talks between two nations are usually governed by dated and signed joint-communique that can be cited if and when the occasion demands doing so. As the case is, the Chinese Government could, at some future date (say upon a change of government in either country) state that Dr Bawumia’s account of what the Chinese told his delegation differed from the Chinese Government’s recollection of what actually took place.

Even minutes of the meeting, if not initialled by both parties, are not worth the paper they are written on. I fear, then, that the Ghana diplomatic service may have failed the country by not insisting on a joint communique being issued on the talks. When Governments try to solve disputes between themselves and foreign governments, they usually enter into dialogue with the other side long before the actual talks take place.

The agenda is agreed upon beforehand and a draft agreement drawn up by officials, which is then negotiated upon during the talks. Even when the negotiations fail to bring agreement, this is noted in the final communique, and where there is goodwill on both sides, a wish is expressed to engage in further talks, to resolve the differences. Ghana has been independent for sixty years and it cannot go about carrying out its diplomacy as if its diplomats were born yesterday.

This way of doing things was also present when the GITMO 2 case arose and the then Minister of Foreign Affairs was quoted as saying that a meeting took place on the issue at which she was excluded. Our diplomatic service must act in such a way that observers can tell, without even knowing the full details of what they say and do, that they are following the precept that a nation has no permanent friends but permanent interests.

Be that as it may, a salvage operation ought to be put in place by the Ghana Government, in which it attempts to pick up the galamsey element from the touchline across which it has been kicked. China. A beginning should be made by building into the financial structures promised by China, a vehicle for incorporating the cost of rehabilitating galamsey-ravaged areas, in the package of financing that the projects will require. The dazzling schemes about bauxite mining and the construction of railways should not take precedence over projects that stand a including a built-in post-galamsey rehabilitation aspect.

The “one-district-one-factory” objective, in particular, ought to start in the galamsey-ravaged areas, with the costing of the factories calculated in such a way that they would factor in the rehabilitation of the devastated areas concerned.

For instance, say it was agreed to establish a furniture factory in a galamsey-ravaged area. First of all, the project would require that all the galamsey-created craters in the area should be levelled and covered, and vegetation such as bamboos, raffia-cane or other fast-growing plants could be grown on the land and used to make furniture.

The Chinese are very good at creating rural industries, and by such methods, they could help us to kill two birds with one stone: rehabilitate the ravaged lands and waterways, and at the same time, create factories that would bring money as well as create employment for those who have disengaged from galamsey.

Other factories, constructed on the same model can take the form of cassava cultivation (from which we would get both food and starch for export); fish ponds that produce fish both for consumption and canning; and similar, imaginative projects that make use of local materials and labour.

Unless this is done, the huge sums talked about will be seen as nothing but empty words, which remind us of some grandiose schemes talked about in the past but which have not seen the light of day.

I hope the Chinese will endeavour to rescue our leadership from being accused of having “sold out” to foreign interests.

That is a concept with which the Chinese are familiar – for they have accused the Kuomintang elements in Taiwan of doing just that, for decades on end.