Albert Oppong-Ansah
Accra, Aug. 25, GNA – Professor Fatima Denton, Director of the United Nations University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA), has urged African countries to leverage natural resources for job creation and industrialisation.
She said countries must move beyond exporting raw materials and use their resource wealth to promote local value addition, build industries and drive long-term economic transformation.
Prof. Denton told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview that natural resource management should be linked to employment, technology, investment and broader structural transformation.
“The first lesson is to think more holistically about our natural resources. Think in terms of jobs and think in terms of the structural transformation plan behind those resources,” she said.
Prof. Denton said Africa must avoid remaining trapped in a cycle of extracting and exporting raw materials without creating significant value or expanding productive capacity.
She urged countries to use their resource wealth to strengthen technological capabilities and reduce dependence on external markets and expertise.
“We have to look at these resources not just as vulnerabilities but as opportunities. They connect several strands of development that can come together to drive economic transformation,” she said.
Prof. Denton stressed the importance of shaping the narrative around Africa’s natural resources, saying the way resource issues were framed could influence who benefited from them.
She cited the growing global demand for critical minerals required for the green energy transition and questioned who determined which resources were classified as “critical” and how such classifications influenced international economic relations.
“The narrative matters. We must adopt an opportunity narrative, one that says we are not just vulnerable, we are capable,” she said.
Prof. Denton said Africa contributed relatively little to global carbon emissions but possessed many of the resources required for the transition to greener economies.
This presented an opportunity for African countries to collaborate, attract investment, increase local value addition and develop green industries around their resource endowments, she said.
Prof. Denton cautioned that possessing abundant mineral deposits alone did not guarantee economic control or development benefits.
“If the resources remain in the ground and the value attached to them is not developed, then we own them, but we do not control them. True control required investments in technology, strategic planning and human capital capable of managing and transforming resources into higher-value products.
Commenting on Ghana’s mining sector, particularly gold production, Prof. Denton said many specialised skills required for mineral extraction and processing were still sourced from outside Africa.
She recalled a post-COVID discussion with a participant from Mali, during which concerns were raised about the concentration of expertise in certain specialised mining activities outside producing countries.
Prof. Denton said the situation underscored the need for countries such as Ghana to develop skills across the entire resource value chain, from exploration and extraction to processing and downstream manufacturing.
“For a country like Ghana, we must think upstream, midstream and downstream. What are the skill sets needed across the value chain that can give Ghana an advantage? Developing local expertise would not only reduce reliance on foreign skills but also create more quality jobs for young people entering the labour market.
“It is interesting that we are producers of these natural resources, but the jobs created from them are often relatively few. We need to find ways of maximising job creation and ensuring these are decent jobs that young people would want to pursue,” she said.
GNA
Edited by Kenneth Sackey
25 Aug. 2026
Reporters: Albert Oppong-Ansah
Email: [email protected]
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