Professor Godfred Alufar Bokpin, an Economist, says Ghana currently lacks the capacity to effectively manage and benefit from full-scale resource nationalisation.
“We currently lack the full capacity to handle the entire value chain, from extraction to refining, at the scale required,” he said.
His remarks come amid renewed calls by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) for Ghana to assert stronger ownership over its mineral wealth, including limiting the role of multinational mining companies.
The economist said this on a current affairs programme monitored by the Ghana News Agency on Sunday.
Prof. Bokpin, however, cautioned that such calls, though appealing, risked overlooking a critical national weakness.
He raised concerns that any rushed attempt to nationalise the sector could expose deep structural inefficiencies.
His comments challenge the growing narrative that Ghana is ready to take over its “lifeblood” resources.
However Professor Bokpin noted that the country’s limitations in technology, financing and skilled human resources remain significant barriers.
The economist said that the nationalisation push is partly emotional warning that past experiences in the extractive sector showed that ambition alone could not replace expertise and systems.
“These are not simple issues. Wishing, hoping and wanting to control our resources is not enough. The real question is whether we have the capacity to do so effectively.” He said.
Prof. Bokpin pointed to Ghana’s long struggle with gold refining as evidence of the country’s challenges.
“Despite multiple attempts over the past three decades, efforts to establish sustainable refining operations have repeatedly collapsed.
“We have tried gold refining in this country several times, and it has not worked. That tells you that the problem is deeper than ownership, it is about capability,” he said.
He noted that Ghana’s mining story has for years been characterised by strong GDP contributions but weak outcomes in employment creation, poverty reduction and inequality.
Data, he said, showed that while gold had contributed over 20 per cent to GDP growth in the past two decades, job creation and broader economic transformation had lagged behind.
Even more striking, he added, was the recent surge in global gold prices, which rose significantly in 2025 but failed to translate into proportional increases in government revenue.
“This tells you that simply owning the resource does not automatically translate into benefits,” he said.
Prof. Bokpin’s also raised concerns about Ghana’s readiness to replace multinational mining companies, which currently dominate the sector.
He warned that pushing out foreign investors without building local capacity first could lead to reduced output and lost revenue.
“If we insist on certain nationalistic positions, we must be prepared to go without foreign investment and accept the potential loss in what we currently earn from mining,” he stated.
Professor Bokpin proposed that Ghana maintains foreign participation while aggressively renegotiating contracts and strengthening local capacity over time.
“At the time we signed many of these agreements, we were negotiating from a position of weakness. Today, that has changed. We must review and rewrite those contracts to reflect our current reality,” he said.
He called for greater trust and support for Ghanaian industrialists, stressing that local entrepreneurs with the capacity to operate large-scale mining ventures had often been sidelined or undermined.
“We have people in this country who can take up significant roles in the value chain, but they are not always supported. Sometimes, the political environment itself becomes a barrier,” he added.
Source: GNA
