The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, Ken Ashigbey, has stressed that Ghana cannot rely solely on local capacity to fully exploit its vast mineral resources, insisting that foreign investment remains essential to unlocking the sector’s full potential.

He argued that the scale of Ghana’s mineral deposits is too large for domestic actors alone to develop effectively, and called for a strategic approach that attracts international capital and expertise.

Mr Ashigbey said Ghana’s underground gold reserves are immense, describing them as running into “trillions of ounces”, and noted that local capacity constraints make external partnerships unavoidable.

“The thing we should bear in mind is that, beyond the things we are mining, there are six gold belts, the six trillions of ounces of gold that are sitting there and we as Ghanaians alone will not be able to do it; we still need to be able to attract some investors to come and do it,” he said.

He made the remarks during a high-level policy dialogue titled “To Nationalise or Transform? Rethinking Ghana’s Approach to Mining, Oil and Critical Minerals”, organised by JoyNews in Accra on Tuesday, May 26.

The forum brought together industry leaders, policymakers, academics and governance experts to examine Ghana’s extractive sector model amid renewed debates over nationalisation and alternative approaches that combine local participation with foreign investment.

Mr Ashigbey’s comments come amid growing national discussions about how best to manage Ghana’s natural resources, with some advocating full nationalisation while others support hybrid models that leverage external financing and technical expertise alongside domestic involvement.

Ghana has been a gold-producing country for over a century and also possesses significant deposits of bauxite and manganese. About 15 years ago, it entered the oil production era following the start of commercial crude production from the Jubilee Field in December 2010.

Attention is now increasingly shifting towards lithium and other critical minerals as Ghana positions itself within the global energy transition and rising demand for battery-related resources.

Mr Ashigbey’s remarks highlight the ongoing policy tension between resource sovereignty and the practical need for international partnerships in a capital-intensive and technologically complex industry.