Ghana’s varied mineral endowment including Gold, Manganese, Diamond And Bauxite are acknowledged the world over.
The west African nation used to be a the leading producer of gold in the world and is reported to have accounted for about 35 percent of total world gold output in the past – no wander it was referred to as the Gold Coast.
Consequently the mining sector is one of the most important segments of the Ghanaian economy and has contributed significantly to the country’s socioeconomic development since the colonial era.
The sector’s influence, particularly the gold sub-sector, has been part of Ghanaian tradition and custom and has fetched billions of dollars in the form of investments, revenues, taxes to many governments and a source of livelihood to Ghanaians.
However, the country’s share of world gold output has dwindled and currently ranks around tenth globally and second in Africa after South Africa.
This notwithstanding, the sector continues to offer a stronger potential to spawn extensive revenue mobilisation and enough employment to provide a more evident economic benefit to the country and value-added means of support for the population.
This is possible if and only if the nation stretches its brains a tiny little bit and adopts pragmatic policies and an all-inclusive approach to develop the entire value chain and the synergies the sector offers.
Over the centuries, managers of the West African economy, the citizenry and local chiefs have viewed the mineral deposits as easy-cash-cows to be milked dry- live for today; forget about tomorrow.
Ghanaian governments have introduced a myriad of policy initiatives including, mining codes, Laws, fiscal Regimes and defined an array of taxes, rents, fees and incentives to the mining sector since independence.
These initiatives; in the name of `getting the most out of our natural resources,” can only be described as a tunneled vision directed at the `Cash!’ while thousands of unemployed youth who could impart nation building throng our streets aimlessly, some waste away in what has become known as ‘galamsey,’ illegal small-scale gold mining.
Ghana has adequate raw materials in the form of palm kernel and coconut nuts for the production of activated carbon and lime, a very useful input in the mining industry, yet these are imported with hard earned foreign exchange. Bauxite can be processed into alumina, a raw material for aluminum.
Clay deposits can be used for bricks for buildings and for ceramics for homes and offices to reduce high import cost for construction. The list is endless but Ghana must find ways of creating a local mining supply chain to generate jobs for the mass of unemployed youth and improve the income earning levels for the citizenry.
These resources may be blessings for Ghana, but they may as well be curses.
By Ekow Moses
