Richard Ellimah is a Community Activist, Journalist, Trainer, Development Planner, Researcher and Natural Resource Governance Analyst.

He has almost two decades of civil society experience, particularly in Ghana’s natural resource space. Educated at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi and Maastricht School of Management (MSM) in the Netherlands, Richard holds a Master of Science degree in Development Planning and Management as well as an Executive Certificate in Management (Managing Sustainable Development). Additionally, he has undertaken short courses in several institutions across the world. Some of these include: Anti-Corruption and Good Governance (Marquette University, USA), Reporting on the Extractives (PANOS Institute, Mali), Financial Secrecy, Society and Vested Interests (Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway), Community Aspects of Resource Development (University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia), Reversing the Resource Curse (Central European University, Budapest, Hungary), Local Economic and Social Development in Extractives (University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia) and Action

Research for Young Advocates (Bogota, Colombia). Some of the awards and fellowships Richard has won include Les Aspen Fellow (2009), Netherlands Fellowship Programme (2010), Canadian Education Awards for Africa (2009-2010), International Mining for Development Scholarship (2013) and Australia Awards for Africa (2015).

Richard has a rich and extensive professional experience. He started his professional career as News Editor of Obuasi-based Shaft FM. He later joined Wacam, a human rights and environmental non-governmental organisation where he served as Monitoring and Evaluation/Communications Officer, and later, as a Programmes Officer. After working with Wacam for 5 years Richard, together with some friends established the Centre for Social Impact Studies (CeSIS), a research and advocacy non- governmental organisation in January 2011. He served as the organisation’s Executive Director till January 2021 when he joined UNDP as Programme Specialist of the Development Minerals Programme. After the expiration of his appointment, he returned to CeSIS and is now serving as a Natural Resource Governance Analyst.

Passionate about community issues, Richard has also held a number of voluntary positions of trust. He has been an Election Observer for the 2000 and 2004 general elections with Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO). In 2015 he was appointed a member of the Obuasi Municipal Assembly. In this capacity he also chaired the Development Planning Sub-Committee and served on the Mining Committee as well. In 2016 the Minerals Commission appointed him as a member of the Movement Committee which successfully negotiated for the removal of illegal miners from AngloGold Ashanti’s concession and made arrangements to resettle them on alternative concessions prepared for them. He is currently a member of Publish What You Pay, Ghana; the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas (CSPOG) and the National Coalition on Mining (NCOM). He served for about 15 years on the Steering Committee of PWYP Ghana.

Richard has contributed articles to two books including: ‘Stained Gold: A Story of Human Rights Violations in Ghana’s Mining Industry’ in Rodriguez-Garavito, Caesar (ed.) Fighting the Tide. Human Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global South., and ‘Sitting by the River and Washing Your Hands with Spittle: The Story of Informal Miners of Obuasi’ in Corredor-Villamil (ed.) Reimagining the Future of Human Rights: Social Justice, Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Global

South.