The discovery of critical minerals in the country must be managed well to address the old patterns of exploitation to accelerate the development of the economy, the Director General of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Dr Audrey Smock Amoah, has said.

To this end, she has called for intensive research to develop critical minerals such as lithium and clay into industrial products to reduce the export of such minerals in their raw state.

She also stressed the need for the country to develop local content policies that strengthened domestic industries, enhance technical capacity, and build regional value chains that retain wealth within the country.

Dr Amoah disclosed this at Equity in Extraction Conference 2025 being organised by the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) in collaboration with the NDPC and International Development Economics Associates under the auspices of Ford Foundation.

The three-day conference is on the theme: “Equity in extraction: Addressing inequalities in natural resource governance, critical minerals and climate change.”

It is being attended by more than 100 participants from Africa such as Ghana, Egypt, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.

The objectives of the conference are to explore the broader political and economic structures shaping natural resource governance in Sub-Saharan Africa and how national and regional policies, trade agreements, and macroeconomic factors determine who benefits from and who is burdened by extraction, examine the relationship between the global demand for critical minerals and its impact on climate justice in Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the environmental costs of extraction, the challenges of a just transition, and how to ensure that climate policies do not worsen existing inequalities.

As the world transitioned to clean energy, she said, demand for critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and manganese was projected to surge, presenting immense economic opportunities for Ghana and Africa.

She said the continent held some of the world’s largest reserves of those minerals, positioning it to play a central role in the global green transition.

“Our advantage must lie not only in extraction but also in value addition, technology transfer, and innovation,” she stated.

Equity in extraction, Dr Amoah said, was both a moral and developmental imperative, requiring that revenues from natural resources be reinvested in education, healthcare, and infrastructure while creating decent jobs.

The Executive Director of ISODEC, Mr Sam Danse, said the conference built on the 2022 High-Level Conference on inequality and resource governance.

He warned that weak governance and debt-driven extraction risk repeating historical exploitation patterns.

Mr Danse said the conference would come out with practical recommendations for policymakers and other stakeholders for the better extraction of mineral resources of Africa and elicit concrete commitments from government and CSOs to advance transparency in sharing of revenue of mineral resources.

The Executive Director of IDEAs, Dr Charles Abugre, added that Africa’s resource wealth was deepening poverty and inequality due to overreliance on exports rather than value addition.

BY KINGSLEY ASARE & ELIZABETH NUKUNU KPORSU