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The Minerals Income Investment Fund (MllF) as part of its mandate to support the development of the entire mining value delivery system in Ghana has signed a groundbreaking partnership agreement with the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT).
The agreement which was executed at the offices of MllF on 16th August 2023 covers four principal areas.
These are the construction of a world class Technical Training Centre which would also accommodate a modern Gold Jewelry Making and Training Center, an undergraduate and postgraduate scholarship program for women from the mining communities and an annual speaker series program.
The agreement between MllF and UMaT details support in the four key areas with a two-pronged objective being, the continuous transformation of the University into a center of global excellence and as a major source of quality local human capital to support a fast expanding and sophisticated mining sector.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Minerals Income Investment Fund, Edward Nana Yaw Koranteng elucidated further that, “the agreement underpins the beneficiation objective on which MllF was established”.
The Technical Center will be an important cog for advanced technical training as new minerals are continuously being discovered in Ghana and new methods of value extraction formulated which requires a constant development of skills to meet these changing trends.
Ghana needs the technical capacity and quality human capital to ensure that value is created and retained in Ghana. Mr Koranteng said, “real value in mining cannot be found in just taxes and royalties. The real benefit is found in the creation of value through value addition to the minerals, by having significant equity stake across the entire value chain, by creating an industry on the back of the new local content policy especially through the manufacturing of most of the inputs to be sourced locally. But most importantly, we cannot support this transformation without the requisite set of skills or the human capital.”
This is why the technical support, the Jewelry making and training center and scholarships with a bias towards engineering are so important”.
Ghana is the number one gold producer in Africa and well known for its high-grade gold. Unfortunately, our gold craftsmanship and Jewelry making (albeit authentic) is still rudimentary and has pushed Ghana out of a circa $ 700 Million-dollar annual global jewelry market.
According to Mr Koranteng, Ghana can leverage on its cultural appeal and create a global jewelry market destination if it can hone these skills. The goal is to train as many jewelers as necessary to turn Ghana into a jewelry making hub. This is part of our goal to see value addition to gold in the country instead of just exporting the raw material.
Source: myghanadaily
