President John Mahama has affirmed that the establishment of the Goldbod has positioned Ghana to take full control over the export of gold from the country.

According to him, this has helped the country to export about 104 tonnes of gold from the small scale sector in 2025.

The president made the disclosure in a keynote address to open the 2026 Africa Trade Summit in Accra.

The Trade Summit by the African Trade Chamber assembled key African business leaders and policy makers to deliberate on promoting trade integration and value addition on raw materials from the continent.

The summit is expected to tailor discussions to support industrial financing to benefit from the African continental free trade area.

In his speech as keynote speaker, President John Mahama noted that Ghana has taken the lead to benefit from its natural resource base.

“As part of our resetting agenda for economic transformation, we’re looking to add value to our export such as cocoa, cashew, oil palm, cassava, gold, manganese bauxite, oil and etc. On the issue of resource sovereignty, we must break the colonial mode of large foreign own concession extracting value for the benefit of foreign interests and entities while Africa remains in poverty. We must be boldly selfish and claim a fairer share of our natural resource endowment”.

“In Ghana, I will give a simple example. We’re exercising greater sovereignty over our natural resources, and the establishment of the Ghana Goldbod has given us greater control over our gold export. In 2024, total gold export from the small-scale mining sector was said to amount to 63 tonnes”, the President added.

Of this volume, the foreign exchange repatriation accounted for only about 40 tonnes of the exported gold. 23 tonnes of the forex did not come back.

Since the establishment of the Goldbod in April 2025, exports from the small-scale mining sector to date have increased to 104 tonnes with 100% of the foreign exchange repatriated through the Bank of Ghana.

The Minister of Trade, Industry and Agribusiness, Elizabeth Ofosu Adjare charged investors to see Africa’s industrialisation as a global market opportunity for business growth.

The Executive Chair of the African Trade Chamber, Benedicta Lasi told Joy Business that more action is needed to solve the challenges of the continent.

The two-day summit is under the theme: “Financing Africa’s industrialization, developing industrial value chains, benefit and market integration”.