By Web Admin 
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, May 25, 2026
Alpha Ibrahim Sesay, Minister of Trade and Industry, warned that Sierra Leone is leaving vast wealth on the docks by exporting unprocessed minerals and agricultural commodities, and urged a shift from extraction to industrialisation during his keynote at the 2026 Sierra Leone Mining Week.
“Every ship leaving our shores with unprocessed minerals and agricultural products carries away our jobs, possible local industries, technology, taxes, and even opportunities for economic transformation,” he said at the Freetown International Conference Centre, arguing that decades of raw-material exports have produced “poverty, unemployment, and dependency” rather than shared prosperity.
Sesay framed the problem historically, tracing modern patterns of resource dependence to the colonial partition of Africa. He said a new “scramble for Africa” is under way, focused on critical minerals, and warned that external buyers prefer to purchase raw inputs rather than support domestic processing. “They don’t want to transform the raw materials into finished products,” he said, adding that Sierra Leone must seize the chance to change course.
The minister highlighted concrete losses using iron ore as an example. Sierra Leone exported roughly $837 million of raw iron ore last year. If that ore had been beneficiated into higher-value intermediate or finished steel products, Sesay said, the revenue could have been far larger: simple beneficiation to a mid-grade processed product at an assumed $250 per metric ton would have raised exports to about $1.35 billion; producing steel billets or finished steel might have generated still higher returns, and direct-reduced-iron (DRI) production would have multiplied revenues further. “What we are doing as a country here is we are losing out on all this revenue,” he said, noting that these foregone earnings are accompanied by missed employment and industrial opportunities.
Sesay outlined the ripple effects of downstream processing. Local steelmaking and fabrication could underpin construction-material production, machine parts, industrial machinery assembly, railway components, and related services such as packaging, power generation, training, and port logistics. “We are missing out on all of this,” he said, calling out countries such as China, India, and South Korea as examples that industrialised by processing raw materials into finished goods.
Diamonds and cocoa provided parallel case studies. A rough diamond exported at about $200 per carat can command $1,500–$5,000 per carat after cutting, polishing and branding, he said; exporting raw gems therefore captures only a sliver of potential value. For cocoa, he argued that processing into cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and chocolate—rather than shipping beans—could create tens of thousands of jobs across farming, processing, packaging and logistics, while stimulating complementary sectors such as retail, tourism and agribusiness finance.
At the macro level Sesay warned that raw-export dependence fuels weak industrialisation, persistent trade deficits, pressure on the Leone, low tax receipts, slow GDP growth from manufacturing, limited technology transfer and continued reliance on imported finished goods—even when the inputs are Sierra Leonean. “No nation will ever develop with all your natural resources if you continue to export them raw,” he said.
Sesay acknowledged real constraints: an uneven policy and legal environment, unreliable energy supply, skills gaps, and stringent “bankable project” criteria that make investment finance hard to secure. He urged context-specific financing models, industrial skills development and industrial policy calibrated to Sierra Leone’s realities rather than imported project templates.
Still, he argued the country has strong comparative advantages: strategic location for trade, political stability, a young and vibrant population, and committed leadership. Under President Julius Maada Bio’s administration — and with support from the mining sector and development partners — Sesay said Sierra Leone can pivot to a value-driven economy that prioritises beneficiation, manufacturing, and wealth redistribution.
“Beneficiation is not optional, value addition is not optional, industrialisation is not optional,” he said. He called for a national push to move from commodity dependence to manufacturing, stressing that the nation’s future prosperity will depend not on what is extracted but on what is produced, processed, transformed, and exported.
He gave the keynote address to frame the perspective of the panel on value addition and beneficiation. Sesay urged immediate action and long-term commitment to build processing capacity, attract investment in downstream industries, and create the jobs and revenues that raw exports currently forfeit.