For Professor Fatima Denton, (Director of UNU-INRA), African countries need to harness their natural resources as catalysts for job creation, industrialisation, and long-term economic transformation.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), she urged African governments to move beyond the export of raw materials and focus on local value addition, technological development, and industrial growth.
Prof. Denton stressed that natural resource management should be linked to employment generation, investment, and broader structural transformation. She noted that Africa must avoid a cycle in which valuable resources are extracted and exported without creating significant domestic value or expanding productive capacity. According to her, natural resources should be viewed not as vulnerabilities but as opportunities to support economic development and strengthen technological capabilities.
Highlighting the growing global demand for critical minerals needed for the green energy transition, Prof. Denton emphasised the importance of shaping the narrative around Africa’s resources. She argued that the continent, despite contributing relatively little to global carbon emissions, possesses many of the resources essential for greener economies, creating opportunities for collaboration, investment, and the development of green industries.
She cautioned, however, that resource ownership alone does not guarantee economic benefits. Effective control, she said, requires investment in technology, strategic planning, and human capital to transform raw materials into higher-value products. Prof. Denton also pointed to skills gaps in Africa’s mining sector, noting that many specialised roles in mineral extraction and processing are still filled by expertise from outside the continent.
Using Ghana’s mining industry as an example, she called for the development of skills across the entire resource value chain, from exploration and extraction to processing and manufacturing. Building local expertise, she said, would reduce dependence on foreign skills, create quality employment opportunities, and enable countries to maximize the economic benefits derived from their natural resources.
Prof. Denton stressed on the power of narratives. "We must adopt an opportunity narrative, one that says we are not just vulnerable, we are capable. We have to look at resources not just as vulnerabilities, but as opportunities. There resources connect several strands of development that can come together to drive economic transformation."
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