Ghana’s Tantalum Discovery & Africa's Journey to Self-Sufficiency

“Tantalum is going to add to the resource base of Ghana, and now it is going to help in revenue generation for the country in two forms. Number one, exchange earnings. When we are able to mine the tantalum, we will export [it] and Ghana will get some money out of that. Now, also, we have what we call taxes from the mining companies. Ghana is going to gain some money from it. Royalties, even fees for license to operate, and all that. The country is going to gain. So in terms of revenue or in terms of income, that is how Ghana is going to benefit,” Dr. Sunkari explains.

“If we have funding from Russia, we the researchers, together with researchers from the Geological Survey Authority, will take it to another level. Then we can better inform the populace and the citizenry and the global community that yes, what we have actually gotten can be mined for profit. And then perhaps maybe a Russian company or any other company could bid for it. And if they are coming to terms with the government, the government can give them the permission to do the mining,” he stresses.

“I support the idea. As Africans with our resources [on] our continent, we should be able to determine how much we sell our resources. We shouldn't seat [and wait] for Western countries to come and determine how much they are buying our resource, and it becomes unified for everywhere. So we are charging the African Union to come up with our stock exchange for the various commodities,” Dr. Sunkari advocates.