Business Analyst - June 30

Thursday, June 30, 2022
Ghana plots transformation into West
African mining support services hub
The Ghana Chamber of
Mines has declared its
intention to make the
country and hub for
mining support services
across the West African
sub region and is
evolving a road map to
actualize its plans,
using consultants
contracting for this
purpose. TOMA
IMIRHE examines the
prospects for success
and the benefits to be
derived.
SINCE the 1990’s, Ghana,
under successive political
administrations, has
trumpeted its lofty
ambitions of becoming a
trade and investment hub for West
Africa. More recently, under the
tenure of the President Nana Akufo-
Addo administration the country has
become more specific in its
aspirations, seeking to become a
financial services and ICt hub in
particular, although actual policy
initiatives to make this happen have
been opaque at best.
Now however the Ghana
Chamber of Mines, backed solidly by
its members, has declared its
intention to make Ghana a West
African hub for mining support
services, and is actually taking
concrete steps to actualize this
ambition. the Chamber last week
unveiled its plans to senior business
journalists grouped together under
the auspices of Journalists for
Business Advocacy (JBA), a
professional association of senior
media practitioners that partners
industry regulators and participants
in several different sectors to
promote improved conduct,
performance and consequent
impacts.
Importantly, the Chamber’s ambition
is not just another lofty vision that is not
backed by concrete action as many, if not
most, announced dreams of making
Ghana a sub regional business hub have
been; the Chamber is actually in the
process of putting together a team of
consultants to identify areas where
Ghana’s mining industry has
competitive advantages with regards to
providing support services, and to work
out a feasible plan of action to position
its mining support service providers as a
hub used by the growing number of sub
regional neighbours who are actively
seeking to increase solid mineral
exploration and production activities in
their respective jurisdictions.
to this end the GCM has budgeted
several hundreds of thousands of uS
dollars (the actual budget has not yet
been revealed) to secure a fully workable
plan in this regard.
However, challenges are already being
encountered. In 2020 the Chamber
advertised a call for proposals for the
study on positioning Ghana as the sub
regional hub for mining support services.
out of the 13 companies that responded,
four were short-listed for the final round
of the selection process, with the
expectation that the chosen consultants
would commence the study this year.
However in discussing with all four
short-listed companies the GCM found
that none of them had fully grasped the
scope of the required study and thus the
competencies required. Consequently the
Chamber has revised its road map; the
plan now is to assemble a team out of the
contenders and effectively guide them
onto the path that needs to be followed to
derive the road map needed to position
Ghana as a mining support services
hub. this, process, the GCM hopes, will
be completed this year enabling the team
to actually start executing the study by
the start of 2022.
With funding fully
in place, enthusiasm is
high; JBA is already
bidding to become part
of the team, offering to
provide a plan for
marketing Ghana’s
mining support services
industry through the
media in target
countries. Considering
the close working
relationship between
the Chamber and JBA
over the past few years ,
and the resultant
mutual respect
each party has for
the other’s
capacities, this group
of media practitioners
is likely to be among
the first professional
“Considering the close
working relationship
between the Chamber
and JBA over the past
few years , and the
resultant mutual
respect each party has
for the other’s
capacities, this group
of media practitioners
is likely to be among
the first professional
segments to get
accepted onto the
multi-disciplinary
team to be formed.
segments to get accepted onto the multidisciplinary
team to be formed. (If that
happens the Business Analyst will have
representation on the team that would be
tasked to develop the road map.)
to be sure, Ghana’s mining support
services industry is well positioned to
serve as the hub for West Africa’s mining
industry.
First of all, Ghana’s mining industry
is both the biggest and the oldest in the
sub region. It is well over a century old
and more importantly, its liberalization –
part of the liberalization of the entire
economy during the 1980s – provided the
model framework which the rest of the
continent adopted subsequently and
which has resulted in Africa’s solid
minerals mining industry becoming
arguably the most important economic
revenue generating sector on the
continent. Following Ghana’s example
countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and
Cote d’Ivoire have made West Africa one
of the fastest growing mining
investment destinations in the world.
Indeed Ghana’s regulatory and
investment facilitation framework has
been adopted by countries much further
afield as well, particularly in East Africa
which is resultantly competing with
West Africa in attracting international
capital and expertise in the mining
sector.
But even more important than the
size and regulatory pioneering status of
Ghana’s mining industry is its local
capacity, with regards to the provision of
both goods and services used by the
international exploration and production
companies that rule the roost all around
Africa. Here, it is important to
distinguish between local content and
local participation – even Ghana’s
mining support services industry is
largely foreign owned. However they are
domiciled in Ghana which means most
of their net income – and other economic
benefits such as employment and subcontracting
opportunities - are retained
locally and this would still be the case if
that income is generated abroad.
Interestingly, unlike in the case of
Ghana’s relatively new upstream oil and
gas industry, local content regulations
have been driven primarily by the
industry itself rather than by
government. Here the GCM has
collaborated with the Minerals