Jamaica and Ghana are negotiating a $60 million deal to process Jamaican bauxite at a Louisiana refinery and ship the alumina to Ghana, reviving a trade relationship first forged in the 1970s.

The talks began in March 2026 after representatives from Ghana’s state-owned bauxite sector visited Jamaica to explore renewed cooperation. Under the proposed arrangement, Jamaican bauxite would be refined at the Gramercy facility in Louisiana before the resulting alumina is shipped to Ghana for aluminium production.

“We started talking about how we can rejuvenate getting some more bauxite refined in our Louisiana plant in Gramercy, so it can be shipped to Ghana, so they can do the production of aluminium there,” Donna Marie Howe, Managing Director of Jamaica Bauxite Mining Limited (JBM), told JIS News.

Howe said the initiative has the backing of Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama, who completed a four-day state visit to Jamaica in early August 2026. “The timeline for this is imminent,” Howe stated. “It is for us now then to just build on those discussions and transition that into an actual agreement.”

The deal would build on existing trade flows rather than create a new market. In 2024, Ghana imported about 26,250 tonnes of Jamaican alumina worth $11.1 million. Total Jamaican alumina sales to Ghana are estimated at roughly $25 million annually. By comparison, Ghana’s exports to Jamaica in 2025 did not exceed $100,000.

The commercial relationship between the two countries dates back to the 1970s. In July 2005, then Jamaican Prime Minister P. J. Patterson announced that Jamaica would assist Ghana in developing its own alumina refinery following talks with then Ghanaian President John Kufuor. That joint commission largely faltered and fell into abeyance.

Ghana’s aluminium ambition stretches back even further. Founding President Kwame Nkrumah envisioned a system powered by the Volta River project, under which Ghana would mine its own bauxite, refine it into alumina and produce aluminium domestically. More than six decades later, that vision remains incomplete.

Ghana still exports raw bauxite while importing alumina to supply the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) smelter in Tema. The Awaso mine produces about one million tonnes of bauxite a year, but Ghana lacks a commercial refinery. Some of its ore is processed abroad in Jamaica, Scotland and Canada before alumina is imported back for domestic production.

The state-owned Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation (GIADEC) now oversees efforts to build an integrated value chain covering mining, refining, smelting and downstream manufacturing. The proposed Jamaica deal would support Ghana’s immediate alumina needs while it continues efforts to build domestic refining capacity.

“It is clear that the times have changed, the systems have changed, and the trust factors have changed,” Jamaica’s foreign affairs and foreign trade minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, said earlier this year. “It is therefore important for us to harness this moment.”