Russian aluminium producer Rusal plans to establish a joint venture in Ghana to mine and process bauxite, according to Russia’s RIA state news agency, reporting a memorandum signed on Thursday on the sidelines of the Russia Africa forum in Moscow. The Ghanaian partner is the Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation, the state agency charged with building an integrated aluminium industry.
Chief executive Evgeny Nikitin told RIA the venture targets annual bauxite production of 5 million metric tonnes and annual processing capacity of 1.2 million tonnes. Ghana currently produces about 1.5 million tonnes of bauxite a year, so a venture at target scale would transform the country’s position in the ore market. Rusal is the world’s largest aluminium producer outside China, operates seven bauxite mines including two in Russia, and produced 18.453 million tonnes of bauxite in 2025, meeting 88 percent of its alumina refineries’ needs. Its established West African base is in Guinea.
The limits on this story are explicit. It rests on a Russian state agency’s account carried by Reuters, no Ghanaian government or GIADEC release was available, and ownership structure, investment amount, deposit location and timetable were not disclosed in the reporting. It is a memorandum, not a financed project.
The context on this site is Ghana Bauxite Company’s 250 million dollar Ecobank financing mandate for the Awaso mine, reported October 29, which finances the existing mine end of the same integrated aluminium ambition. Between Awaso’s expansion and a Rusal venture at Nyinahin scale, Ghana’s bauxite contest is now between delivered domestic financing and a much larger announced foreign target.