‘Africa can do more with mineral wealth’

Africa can address its huge infrastructure deficit if the region’s mineral resources are well-managed within a framework of good governance, Mike Hammah, Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, has told a civil society conference on the mining industry in Accra.

 “Africa has a golden opportunity to improve its pace of economic growth and address its infrastructure deficit if the significant mineral resources are well-managed within a framework of good governance, especially given the current and projected high mineral commodity prices.

“The region’s abundant mineral resources present potential wealth-creation opportunities for socio-economic development,” he said.

A 2010 World Bank study estimated Africa’s infrastructure spending gap at US$90billion annually, and the Washington-based lender has said the region’s government and peoples could benefit more from the exploitation of their mineral resources.

The Accra conference was organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and Third World Network-Africa to discuss strategies to realise the Africa Mining Vision (AMV), which essentially argues that Africa’s rich and diverse mineral heritage should be used as a springboard to address the continent’s chronic poverty and under-development.

The AMV was adopted by heads of states and governments during an African Union summit in 2009 and seeks to shift mineral policy beyond the focus on regimes devoted to the extraction of minerals and the sharing of revenue.

The four-day conference brought together international, regional and national experts as well as decision-makers in the extractives sector.

Mr. Hammah observed that until Africa develops its industries to supply significant proportions of inputs needed by the mining sector and adds value to the raw minerals produced, optimising the contribution from the exploitation of its minerals will be difficult.

“Ghana is no exception in this enterprise; there is a need for a paradigm shift,” he said.

Ghana has a wide infrastructure gap requiring twice the amount the country currently spends in that sector to close, the World Bank said in the 2010 study. Taxes on the industry have been raised in 2012 to boost the state’s revenues, and government has tasked a committee to renegotiate mining agreements.

Mr. Hammah worried that the rate at which the mining industry is catalysing long-term, broad-based development on the continent is slow despite centuries of extractive activities.

Oliver Maponga, from the Economic Commission for Africa’s sub-regional Office for West Africa, observed that poverty remains a major obstacle to development in Africa and “many years of mineral extraction in many of our countries have not been able to provide a reprieve to these basic developmental challenges.”

He said Africa needs an industrialisation strategy anchored on minerals and other natural resources, adding this is critical to the achievement of sustainable growth and development on the continent.