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Ghana’s Minister of Lands and Natural Resources Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah used the opening of the 19th West African Mining and Power Expo (WAMPEX) in Accra to declare that Africa’s top gold producer is done treating mining as a resource extraction exercise. The country wants it to drive industrialisation, generate employment, deepen local participation and deliver the ESG standards that international capital now demands.
“We are overhauling our regulatory and legal frameworks to reflect emerging realities,” said Buah. Nigeria’s Solid Minerals Development Minister Oladele Henry Alake reinforced the regional dimension of that ambition. The global transition towards clean energy, electric mobility and digital infrastructure has sharply increased demand for critical minerals concentrated across West Africa, and the window to benefit from that demand is open now. The region must move from raw material supplier to active participant in global value chains through local processing and regional industrial integration, a shift that requires both regulatory reform and the kind of coordinated investment that has historically been absent.
West Africa’s mining sector is currently valued at US$52.3 billion and projected to reach US$89.1 billion by 2033, with Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Nigeria among the fastest-growing markets across gold, bauxite, iron ore and critical minerals. The commercial opportunity is substantial and growing. Whether the region can convert that geological endowment into genuine industrial development rather than a more profitable version of the same extractive model is the defining question that WAMPEX 2026 placed at the centre of its agenda.
