The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has held a media capacity-building workshop to improve transparency, accountability and investment visibility in Ghana’s industrial minerals sub-sector, an area long overshadowed by the country’s gold-dominated mining industry.
The workshop aims to deepen journalists’ understanding of the economic potential of minerals such as limestone, granite, clay, kaolin, salt and silica, and strengthen their ability to analyse regulatory and revenue-related issues.
For years, public oversight and regulatory attention in Ghana have been disproportionately focused on gold production, leaving the industrial minerals space with limited scrutiny and weak demand-side governance.
This imbalance has contributed to significant revenue shortfalls. A study by the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) found that government earnings from quarry production in 2020 fell 94 percent below potential due to inefficiencies and limited public accountability.
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The problem is compounded by the absence of publicly accessible data on production volumes, market demand, pricing and revenue performance across industrial minerals. The lack of transparency has constrained investor confidence, undermined the sector’s visibility and hampered efforts to attract value addition and industrial linkages.
Despite these challenges, ACEP Senior Policy Analyst (Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Manager (Mabybel Acquaye) stressed that industrial minerals represent some of the most accessible investment opportunities in Ghana’s extractive sector.
According to her, compared to precious minerals, they require lower capital input and simpler technology while offering high prospects for local value addition, manufacturing growth and employment creation.
She highlighted a strong relationship between a country’s level of mineral consumption and the size of its GDP, underscoring the strategic importance of industrial minerals in Ghana’s industrialisation agenda.
The capacity-building session is designed to respond directly to these gaps., empower journalists with knowledge on the uses and economic relevance of industrial minerals, improve their ability to interrogate policies and regulatory frameworks, and enhance their reporting on revenue flows and value-addition possibilities.
ACEP emphasised the critical role of the media as demand-side actors capable of shaping public understanding, influencing policy debates and drawing attention to investment openings within the sub-sector.
By equipping journalists with the tools for data-driven reporting, the initiative aims to promote transparency, attract responsible investments and support Ghana’s broader industrialisation and economic diversification efforts.