PROTOCOLS

Today marks the year 2024 International Women’s Day, set aside to raise awareness of the world and the consciousness of men and women on the achievements we have recorded in our collective strive to ensure that the gender of a person is not the source of her inability to access the outstanding entitlements of our civilisation: access to education, health, employment and healthy family life.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enacted in 1948 was, for many years, the standard that activists sought to achieve to demonstrate that men and women should have equal access to the social, economic and cultural wealth of the world and the freedoms required to reach them.

Following the millennium, we now have the United Nations Social Development Goals to which many countries have pledged commitment, and corporate organisations are working with civil society groups to advance.

On behalf of the African Minerals. Strategy Group, our continent’s most influential voice on mining, formed by ministers of Mining of African states, I wish to congratulate the organisers of this forum for choosing the occasion of the 2024 International Women’s Day to put the progress and the plight of women in the Mining sector on the front burner.

This Agenda is in tune with the theme of this year’s event, “Invest in Women: Accelerating Progress”, chosen to highlight the importance of investing in the development of women for leadership in industry and governance.

If, by certain fortuitous circumstances, it did in the past, the world can no longer ignore women. The challenges of global productivity in industry, agriculture, commerce, technology, and social services require all hands to be on deck. The world needs to engage the mental faculties of men and women in the sciences and academics to research and apply new solutions to pertinent problems.

We live in a world in which no one, no gender, must be left behind. This is the logic of progressive transformation that we desire.

The African Minerals Strategy Group is committed to empowering women with the appropriate skills to enable them participate in the mining value chain, from exploration and extraction to processing and commerce. We support access to technical training in Mining for our young women: we support start-up financial assistance for women mining entrepreneurs, and we champion the inclusion of women in the leadership of the regulatory agencies.

Under my leadership, we shall initiate annual studies on the progress Africa is making in these areas and shall publish findings during the annual International Women’s Day.

Dear participants, let us advance by consolidating our consensus on value addition as a strategy for Wealth retention in Africa. The African Ministers of Mining have resolved to put in place policies which discourage the export of raw minerals and encourage industrial processing of minerals into semi-finished goods for export. This will reduce the obnoxious legacy of unequal exchange, which African scholars see as the manifestation of neo-colonialism.
.Let us elevate the quality of commerce with our trading partners by offering more value. The faithful execution of this policy will provide more jobs and deepen capital formation in the Mining Industry.

This is our chance. Let us use this occasion to change the narrative of our development so that generations unborn will acknowledge that we stood for the future of Africa when it mattered most.

Thank you for listening.

Dr. Oladele Alake
Chairman, Africa Minerals Strategy Group/ Honourable Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Nigeria