Inclusive proletarianisation? Salt mining, outgrower schemes and the politics of dispossession

In August 2024, Electrochem Ghana Limited (EGL), an industrial salt producer, announced an “outgrower scheme” through which it would allocate portions of its 41,000-acre concession to community members along the Songor Lagoon in south-eastern Ghana. This paper examines EGL’s efforts to consolidate exclusive corporate control over a resource that was previously communally owned and governed. The outgrower scheme represents a change in strategy following earlier enclsosure attempts that met with fierce local resistance. Drawing on interviews, policy documents, and media reports, we situate these developments within debates on extractive governance. Employing the Marxist concept of accumulation, the paper argues that, while presented as an “inclusive” partnership, the scheme operates as a mechanism of proletarianisation—one that advances the very dispossession that prior exclusionary strategies could not secure. The findings demonstrate how neoliberal discourses of inclusion are invoked to legitimise corporate appropriation and deepen capitalist control over communal resources.