The role of the state in Sino-Ghanaian relations: The case of Bui hydroelectric dam

Abstract

This article critically examines the dominant role of the state at the level of institutions and policies with China to leverage and shape the developmental outcomes of the current relationship. The new win–win relationship has sparked intense debates, which have attracted the reflections of academics and policy makers and Sino-Africa relations in recent decades. Firstly, that China’s African intervention serves as a catalyst for the continent’s transformation and hence provides the continent opportunity for self-determination. Secondly, that China’s increasing presence in Africa is self-centred due to excessive focus on resource extraction and market expansion, reminiscent of neo-colonial strategies and less developmental. The paper argues that these simplistic narratives produce a discourse that overly amplify China’s actions and rarely analyse how African states can harness the opportunities the relationship entails. It focuses on how to rescue the relationship from being supposed to be one-way street and provides a framework for evaluating the outcomes of the relationship based on African state interventions. The article deploys Ghana’s Bui hydroelectric dam heuristically as a soft power instrument in an attempt to explicate poor Ghanaian state institutional capacity and the weaknesses of its actors in their interactions with Chinese players thus far in building the developmental capacity to sustain economic progress.