Ghana's proposed Minerals and Mining Bill, 2026 would reduce the maximum mining-lease term from up to 30 years to 15 years or the projected life of the mine, whichever is shorter. Gold Fields, which operates the Tarkwa open-pit gold mine in Ghana, has five mining leases expiring on 17 April 2027 while planning around a substantially longer operating future.

That puts a live asset behind the legislation. Gold Fields applied for renewal in November 2025 and submitted a commercial proposal to the government in July 2026. Its mine planning has contemplated extending Tarkwa's life from eight years to 23 years. A 23-year mine does not require a single 23-year lease, but a 15-year statutory ceiling would place more future production and capital behind later renewal decisions.

Tarkwa's Development Agreement also reaches its current endpoint in April 2027 and presently shields the mine from Ghana's new 5% to 12% sliding-scale royalty regime. Gold Fields' 2025 reporting said earlier proposed amendments to Act 703 included abolishing Development Agreements. Reuters' account of the current replacement bill confirms the 15-year lease provision but does not establish that DA abolition survived into the 2026 text. The tenure change is verified in the current draft; the future of the DA structure remains open.

In western Kenya, Shanta Gold, developer of the West Kenya Gold Project, has begun resettlement around its planned Ramula-Mwibona open-pit gold mine. More than 1,200 households are expected to be affected. The question is no longer whether resettlement has started, but whether it can produce durable physical access to the land required for construction after months of community conflict.

Offshore Namibia, Custos Energy is making a different choice. Its subsidiary Trago is selling its 10% interest in Chevron-operated PEL 90 for US$11 million at completion plus contingent consideration. Trago removes the obligation to fund future exploration while Custos retains its 10% interest in PEL 83, home to the Mopane discoveries, where it is carried through FID and development.

Togo sits earlier in the cycle. The government reopened applications for mineral prospecting and exploration rights in August after a 17-month suspension and has now completed its first intergovernmental joint commission with Russia. No Russian mine, licence or financing commitment has followed.

These are different stages of the same investment problem. A resource right creates value only when its duration, physical accessibility and next-stage funding are sufficiently secure for capital to move behind it.

Ghana's draft Minerals and Mining Bill, 2026 would reduce the maximum mining-lease term to 15 years or the projected life of the mine, whichever is shorter, from an initial term of up to 30 years under the current Minerals and Mining Act.

Gold Fields' Tarkwa mine makes that provision immediately relevant.

Five of Tarkwa's six mining leases expire in April 2027. Gold Fields applied for renewal in November 2025 and submitted a comprehensive commercial proposal to the Ghanaian government in July 2026. The company says the timing, outcome and terms of the renewal remain uncertain.

At the same time, Gold Fields has been planning around a longer future for Tarkwa. Its 2025 reporting contemplated extending mine life from eight years to 23 years, supported by a 17-year reserve life and further resource conversion.

A 23-year operating plan does not require a 23-year lease. Long-life mines can operate through successive renewals. The economic issue is how much production, sustaining capital and resource conversion would sit behind future renewal decisions if 15 years becomes the statutory ceiling.

Tarkwa also reaches a separate fiscal deadline in April 2027.

Its Development Agreement with Ghana expires alongside the five leases. Gold Fields says the agreement provides fiscal concessions and stabilising provisions covering taxes, royalties and other matters. It currently protects Tarkwa from the 5% to 12% sliding-scale royalty regime Ghana introduced in March 2026.

The Development Agreement point requires different evidential treatment from the lease cap. Gold Fields' 2025 reporting said earlier government proposals to amend Act 703 included abolition of Development Agreements. Reuters' September reporting on the current Minerals and Mining Bill, 2026 confirms the proposed 15-year lease ceiling but does not report that DA abolition appears in the present draft. Whether that earlier proposal survived into the replacement bill remains to be established.

The special-share provision also requires narrower treatment than initial coverage suggested.

Section 60 of the existing Act already allows the Minister to require a mining company to issue the Republic a special share for no consideration. Existing consent matters include voluntary liquidation, disposal of a mining lease and disposal of the whole or a material part of company assets attributable to Ghanaian operations but held outside Ghana.

The Act also says consent cannot be unreasonably delayed or withheld or subjected to unreasonable conditions.

Section 60 currently sets the maximum fine for failing for two months to comply with a special-share notice at the cedi equivalent of US$10,000. Reuters reports that the draft would raise the maximum to US$150,000.

Tarkwa reaches a tenure and fiscal reset on the same timetable.

Gold Fields needs renewed rights for a mine it believes can operate well into the 2040s while also negotiating the fiscal terms that follow expiry of its Development Agreement.

Damang provides the recent Ghana-specific precedent. Gold Fields received a one-year extension after Damang's lease expired in April 2025. Ownership then transferred to the Government of Ghana on 18 April 2026.

Tarkwa is a different asset with a different operating future. But Damang shows that expiry can lead to substantive changes in asset control rather than an automatic continuation of existing terms.

The most consequential verified provision in the current bill is 15 years.

Its significance is not that a long-life mine becomes impossible. It changes how much of that mine's future depends on another renewal decision.

Tarkwa therefore gives the reform a practical test: five leases expiring in April 2027, a much longer mine plan behind them and a Development Agreement reaching its own endpoint at the same time.

The DA could be equally consequential to Tarkwa's economics, but its treatment in the current bill remains unverified. The special share is narrower still. The power, overseas-assets language and reasonableness safeguard already exist; stronger enforcement is the clearly identified change.

The terms ultimately agreed for Tarkwa will show how Ghana converts shorter statutory tenure into the legal and fiscal conditions around an operating long-life mine.

Sources: Reuters, 30 September 2026 | Minerals and Mining Act, 2006, Act 703 | Gold Fields 2025 Annual Financial Statements | Gold Fields H1 2026 results | Gold Fields H1 2026 financial notes

Shanta Gold, developer of the West Kenya Gold Project, has begun implementing resettlement around the planned Ramula-Mwibona open-pit gold mine in western Kenya.

More than 1,200 households are expected to be relocated across the wider programme. Several families have already moved into permanent replacement homes, including 12 occupied units at one resettlement site.

The process follows serious conflict. In April, two people were killed during clashes around the project, while 47 families from Obwanda fled after arson attacks linked to relocation. Some affected households have since been compensated and resettled.

Shanta says it is using an infill approach that places affected households within established host communities rather than creating one isolated settlement. Its development programme identifies the Resettlement Action Plan, project financing and early works as priorities for 2026.

A mining right does not itself deliver uncontested access to every surface area required for an open pit, plant, roads and supporting infrastructure.

More than 1,200 households turn land access into a project-scale execution programme involving compensation, relocation, grievances and livelihood restoration.

After the April violence, financiers will look beyond whether compensation has been offered. They will want evidence that households have moved, disputes are being resolved and land can be handed over without continuing disruption.

The important change is that resettlement has moved from planning into physical implementation.

That does not establish that Shanta has solved its land-access problem.

The denominator remains more than 1,200 households. Ramula becomes materially closer to construction as households compensated, households relocated, grievances resolved, land handed over and financing conditions satisfied begin moving together.

Sources: Shanta Gold — West Kenya Project | TV47, 3 October 2026 | NTV Kenya — Obwanda resettlement report

Trago Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Namibia-focused Custos Energy, has agreed to transfer its entire 10% participating interest in Chevron-operated PEL 90 offshore Namibia to Chevron affiliate Harmattan Energy.

Trago will receive US$11 million in cash at completion plus contingent consideration linked to appraisal and production milestones.

The production component includes revenues associated with commercial production currently estimated to correspond to between 1.5 million and 2.5 million barrels of oil, depending on commodity-price assumptions. Those barrels describe the production volume associated with the contingent payment. They are not a resource estimate for PEL 90.

PEL 90 remains exploration acreage. Trago was carried through the initial exploration phase but is not carried for future drilling, including Chevron's planned Nabba-1X well in Q4 2026.

Custos is keeping a different Namibia position. It retains 10% of PEL 83, home to the Mopane discoveries. Sintana Energy's 49% indirect interest in Custos gives Sintana a 4.9% look-through interest in PEL 83.

Sintana's Q1 2026 disclosure puts Mopane at approximately 1.38 billion barrels of oil equivalent of gross 3C contingent resources, a 57% increase from the previous 875 million boe estimate. Custos is carried through FID and development.

Custos is not exiting Namibia. It is changing which risks it owns.

PEL 90 requires fresh exploration funding. PEL 83 gives Custos exposure to a discovered resource while it remains carried through FID and development.

The partnership around PEL 90 is also changing before the next well. Equinor has separately agreed to acquire 17.4% from Chevron. Before that transaction, Chevron held 52.5%, QatarEnergy 27.5%, Trago 10% and NAMCOR 10%.

Custos is selling untested and unfunded exposure while retaining discovered and carried exposure.

Chevron is not simply increasing its PEL 90 position. If both pending transactions complete, it gains Trago's 10% but transfers 17.4% to Equinor, taking its interest from 52.5% to 45.1%.

The sharper point is the composition of the partnership.

A minority participant that would have to fund future exploration exits, while Equinor, a major with the balance sheet to participate in the next drilling programme, enters. Chevron remains operator, but the funding capacity around PEL 90 changes before Nabba-1X.

The US$11 million therefore tells us less about the geology than about who is prepared to finance the next test.

Sources: Sintana Energy — PEL 90 Participating Interest Exchange with Chevron, 1 October 2026 | Equinor — PEL 90 transaction, 18 August 2026 | Sintana Energy Q1 2026 MD&A | Sintana Energy, PEL 83

Togo reopened applications for mineral prospecting authorisations and exploration permits in August after suspending new applications in March 2025 while reviewing its mining framework.

The order was signed on 18 August 2026 and restores the ability of companies and investors to submit applications. It does not itself grant exploration rights: applicants still have to demonstrate technical and financial capacity, propose a work programme and obtain approval.

That change now sits alongside Togo's first intergovernmental joint commission with Russia, which concluded in Lomé on 1 October with a memorandum of understanding.

The official Togolese communiqué identifies prospective agreements covering investment protection, trade, customs, energy, science, transport and other areas.

No Russian mine, mineral licence or financing commitment has been announced.

Togo has reopened the administrative route through which new exploration capital can enter while building a more formal economic relationship with Russia.

Neither step establishes that investment will follow.

The commercial test begins when a named company acquires a mineral right and commits capital to a work programme.

Togo is the earliest-stage story in the edition.

Ghana has operating mines. Shanta has a defined development. Chevron and its partners are allocating capital around a specific offshore exploration programme.

Togo has reopened the entry point.

The next useful evidence is therefore a named investor, exploration permit, funded work programme, geological mandate or specific energy project.

Until then, the Russia relationship is a channel, not an investment.

Sources: Togo Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources — reopening of mineral applications, 2 September 2026 | Republic of Togo — first Togo-Russia joint commission, 2 October 2026

This section identifies listed companies with exposure to the commodities and jurisdictions covered above, so that readers can compare how the same country or sector development may affect different operators. It covers named participants in today's stories first, then other listed companies active in the same jurisdiction on the same commodity.

Exposure varies enormously in both size and directness, and several of the most important operators in these jurisdictions are private or state-owned and therefore absent. Inclusion is not investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

Gold Fields | JSE: GFI / NYSE: GFI
Direct producing and tenure exposure: Five Tarkwa mining leases and its Development Agreement reach their current endpoint in April 2027. The renewal package will determine the legal and fiscal framework supporting its longer operating future.

Newmont | NYSE: NEM / ASX: NEM
Direct producing exposure: Newmont's Ghana portfolio is centred on producing Ahafo South and Ahafo North. It no longer owns Akyem.

Zijin Mining Group | SSE: 601899 / HKEX: 2899
Direct producing exposure: Zijin owns Akyem following its acquisition from Newmont, giving it direct exposure to Ghana's evolving tenure framework.

AngloGold Ashanti | NYSE: AU / JSE: ANG
Direct producing exposure: AngloGold operates Obuasi. Watch the final treatment of existing mining rights and subsequent renewals.

Perseus Mining | ASX: PRU / TSX: PRU
Direct producing exposure: Perseus operates Edikan. The final tenure and renewal provisions will determine how the replacement law reaches established producing assets.

OR Royalties | TSX: OR / NYSE: OR
Indirect royalty exposure: OR Royalties holds a 2% net smelter return royalty over the West Kenya Gold Project. Its route to cash flow depends on the project progressing from development into production.

Chevron | NYSE: CVX
Direct exploration exposure: Chevron operates PEL 90 and is reshaping the licence partnership through its agreements with Trago and Equinor ahead of further exploration.

Sintana Energy | TSXV: SEI / AIM: SEI / OTCQX: SEUSF
Indirect portfolio exposure: Sintana has a 49% indirect interest in Custos and Trago. Trago is exiting PEL 90 while Custos retains 10% of PEL 83, giving Sintana an effective 4.9% look-through interest in Mopane.

Equinor | Oslo Børs: EQNR / NYSE: EQNR
Prospective direct exposure: Equinor has agreed to acquire 17.4% of PEL 90 from Chevron, subject to completion.

No direct listed exposure identified.
Institutional-stage exposure: The reopened licensing system and Togo-Russia engagement have not yet produced a named listed mining investor, mineral licence or committed project.