AngloGold Ashanti (AGA) Obuasi Mine has held a development symposium to woo would-be partners to help in the implementation of a 10-year Socio-Economic Development Plan (SEDP) for the Obuasi township and its adjoining communities within the Obuasi Municipality and Obuasi East District Assemblies.
The overall goal of the plan is to help contribute to building resilient and socio-economically self-sustaining communities due to previous experiences from the people of Obuasi.
“Obuasi has experienced over 100 years of mining, and we know the impact mining has had on the community. But when the mine came down in 2014 thereabouts, everybody in Obuasi saw that there was a huge change that impacted the lives of people negatively in all aspects.
“So, the 10-year plan drew on that lesson as brought up by the people through our consultation. We then agreed that if we have to do something different, we need to ensure the economy is diversified; we have to reduce dependency on the mine,” Senior Manager-Sustainability, Emmanuel Baidoo, said when giving detailed information at the symposium.
To this end, Mr. Baidoo noted that securing partnerships with other institutions will help AGA achieve its target; hence the symposium.
“We realised this goal could be achieved through investing and improving social development, investing in sustaining the economy, and then driving partnership. So, what we have done here is part of our interventions to drive partnership toward implementation of the plan.
“We have departed from the notion of us doing everything by ourselves to say that development is the responsibility of all. Obuasi features prominently in the history of mining, and everybody wants to see a big change in Obuasi. We cannot do it on our own, a lot of other institutions, organisations at various levels also are interested in Obuasi,” he said.
Mr. Baidoo therefore called on private organisations to take a keen interest in AGA’s SEDP to push the agenda for development in Obuasi.
“So, we see the SEDP as a rallying plan or programme to bring all these interests together; so that we can harness our resources and collectively push the development agenda in Obuasi. And this is what we have seen here today; we are very excited with the level of interest and participation, and the interest that has been shown by potential partners.
“We are looking forward to working with everyone, but we believe that if we all work together we can change the narrative and push the development agenda in Obuasi,” he emphasised.
