Resource exploitation fuelling Africa’s conflicts – Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama has called on African leaders to address the economic interests behind conflicts on the continent, warning that the control and exploitation of natural resources continue to fuel violence and instability.

He said efforts to restore peace must go beyond military operations and the activities of armed groups to examine the political and economic systems that allow conflicts to persist.

Speaking at the 12th Tana High-Level Forum in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, where he presented the State of Peace and Security in Africa Report, President Mahama argued that the continent’s security challenges could not be fully understood without examining who controls its valuable resources and benefits from their extraction.

He stressed that prolonged instability often involved deeper questions about resource ownership, economic gains and the interests that stood to benefit from continued violence.

“Those are merely the fever, not the malaria plasmodium. The real disease is mostly in the arena of political economy,” he said.

President Mahama cited conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as insecurity in Somalia and Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado region, as examples of crises shaped by a combination of economic interests, governance failures and local grievances.

He said addressing these underlying factors was essential to preventing natural resource wealth from becoming a source of division and conflict.

The President called for stronger resource governance systems to ensure that Africa’s mineral and other natural wealth translated into broad-based benefits for its people instead of worsening inequality and helping to finance instability.

He maintained that sustainable peace across the continent would depend on African governments confronting the political and economic conditions that enable conflicts to endure, alongside efforts to address their immediate security threats.