Ghana's President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said the country is about to halt exporting bauxite and iron ore in unprocessed form as part of a government policy to keep the country at the top of the mining value chain.
He noted that in the global aluminum industry, which is worth more than $180 billion, unprocessed bauxite accounts for only 7.6%, with processed bauxite accounting for most of the market. This, he said, is not unlike other minerals and therefore requires that "we add value to our resources."
"The government's priority is to promote value addition in the natural resources sector and ensure that the highest value of these minerals remains within Ghana," the president said.
In his keynote address, Akufo-Addo also reaffirmed the importance of natural resources to humanity and deplored Africa's approach to natural resource management over the years, which has resulted in the continent "becoming the poorest" in the world despite its wealth of natural resources.
He attributed this to poor negotiations with mining companies, corruption, incompetence, political instability, and the absence of frameworks that enable optimal value addition within the extractive industries.
"We have been mostly short-sighted in these negotiations, settling for less due to corruption, incompetence, and political instability. We have failed to establish the highest ends of the value chains of the extractive industries on our continent," Ghana's leader remarked.
Along with that, the president stressed that natural resources should be harnessed for the sake of sustainable development which requires ensuring that the exploitation of these resources does not destroy the natural environment.
"We must ensure that mining contracts address issues of environmental protection, the payment of adequate compensation to affected communities and the development of the areas where these resources are derived," the president underlined. "We must find a lasting solution to illicit financial flows associated with the natural resources sector."
According to the president, a number of measures have already been taken, including local content and local participation in the mining industry, and strict steps have been taken to cordon off and protect the country's forest resources from attacks by illegal miners and other factors of deforestation and forest degradation.
Since 2017, the government has implemented a number of policies aimed at preserving value in the natural resources sector. For instance, the Ghana Integrated Aluminum Development Corporation (GIADEC) was established in 2018 to develop and promote the country’s integrated aluminum industry.
The Ghana Integrated Iron and Steel Development Corporation (GIISDEC) was also created in 2019, with the primary goal of leveraging Ghana's iron ore reserves and associated metallurgical assets to drive the country's industrialization, according to the minister of lands and natural resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor.