President John  Mahama has appointed Dr.Toni Aubynn as the new Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Minerals Commission.

Among other roles, Dr Aubynn is to assist the Government’s drive to harmonize views among all key stakeholders as major input in the new direction the Government seeks to forge for the local mining industry.

 He replaces Mr. Benjamin Aryee who after thirty years of service at the Commission, thirteen of which were in the capacity of its Chief Executive, moves to the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.

The changes take immediate effect.

Mr Ben Aryee is coming to the Ministry with a lot of experience in the mining sector and is well placed to help the Ministry develop appropriate strategies to strengthen the mining and minerals sector and effect the necessary changes that will enhance the growth of the industry.

 Together with Dr. Aubynn at policy and implementation positions respectively, the Ministry hopes to build the needed synergies for enhanced policy formulation and management of the mining environment.

Dr. Aubynn comes to the Commission with tremendous knowledge and experience in the extractive industries in Ghana. With about twenty years’ of work in the sector, he is currently the CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Mines.

Prior to that, he was the Director of Corporate Affairs for Tullow Ghana Limited, the operator of the Jubilee Oil Fields in Ghana.

Toni Aubynn has also worked for Ranger Minerals’ Damang Mine and Gold Fields Ghana Limited, one of the leading gold producers in Ghana, in various senior management roles. For almost a decade, he was the Head of Corporate Affairs and Sustainable Development for Gold Fields Ghana.

Dr Aubynn has also been involved in a number of mining initiatives both in Ghana and abroad, including his current role  as the Chair of the Association and Commodities Group (ACG) of the London-based International Council of Minerals and Metals (ICMM).

Dr Aubynn was also the Chair of the Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) Working Group of ICMM and a long-time member of the Strategic Management Advisory Group of the World Bank and DFID sponsored Community and Artisanal Small-scale Mining (CASM).

Dr Aubynn also serves on a number of Boards, including the Council of the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), Tarkwa, and the Ghana Railway Development Authority. He also chairs the UN Global Compact Ghana Network as well as the Amenfiman Rural Bank, a leading Ghana Club 100 Rural Bank in Ghana.

He had his undergraduate education at the University of Ghana and obtained various Post-graduate degrees at the Universities of Oslo in Norway, Tampare and Helsinki in Finland.

He was the first Ghanaian PhD Fellow at the United Nations University’s Institute of Advanced Studies in Tokyo, Japan and a Fellow of the University of Tokyo. Toni has written over 40 academic papers (published and unpublished) and presented at various international conferences. He has contributed chapters to four books.