It has recently emerged that Rwanda is endowed with more natural resources than previously thought.

The news comes at a time the Government has just established a fully-fledged statutory body to oversee and coordinate all the exploration and mining-related activities in the country: the Rwanda Mines, Petroleum and Gas Board.

According to officials conversant with the ongoing nationwide airborne geophysics survey, it has been established that the country is home to new minerals including rare earth elements, gemstones, cobalt, iron and lithium.

It is a development that will boost the country’s resource base to meet its development aspirations, including the pursuit for self-reliance and a middle-income status.

However, to take full advantage of this enormous resource potential, there is need to solve the problem of skills gap within the mining sector.

The sector is heavily reliant on foreign expertise along the entire mining chain. The Rwanda Mines, Petroleum and Gas Board should urgently put in place measures to ensure that local skills are enhanced in areas of exploration, licensing, inspection and regulation.

There is need for a deliberate policy to consistently promote homegrown skills in the sector, including ensuring skills and technology transfer, be it in exploration, mining or putting up processing plants.

The School of Mining and Geology at University of Rwanda’s College of Science and Technology has been in place for only two years now and will hold its maiden graduation in about two years time.

The pioneers should be taken on and trained to form the core base of the local expertise in the sector, while more youth should be equipped with the requisite skills in this emerging sector.

Without a critical mass of local experts, the sustainability of the sector, which otherwise presents a lot of potential, will be a big challenge. As Government plans to step up efforts to process the country’s minerals locally, the success of the sector will largely depend on boosting the local capacity to ensure sustainability.