WiM-Africa urged women miners to embrace collaboration over competition

From Charity Nwakaudu, Abuja

Executive Director of Women in Mining Africa (WiM-Africa), Dr. Comfort Asokoro-Ogaji, has admonished women in the mining sector to stop petty rivalry and start building alliances that deliver real power.

 Addressing participants at a weeklong hybrid engagement for women miners and entrepreneurs in Sierra Leone, Ogaji said the biggest threat to women’s progress in mining is not the industry but unhealthy competition among women themselves.

 In a statement signed in Abuja, she warned that infighting weakens the collective strength needed to shake up Africa’s mining landscape.

“Collaboration is the true alternative to competition,” she said.

“When women compete destructively, we lose strength. When we collaborate, we move the sector—and the continent—forward.”

 Ogaji said cooperation is especially critical in the ASM sector, where functional cooperatives, joint ventures, shared equipment and support systems can instantly boost productivity, safety and profit.

 She urged mining companies, associations and women-led networks to ditch recognition battles and instead form serious partnerships that strengthen institutions and deliver impact.

 Calling for a unified front, she pushed women miners across Africa to adopt the NextGen program, insisting that the next decade must produce a new force of young, skilled women leading innovation, policy, ESG and enterprise.

 Ogaji also encouraged WiM chapters to borrow—and boldly—from WiM-Africa’s leadership models and structures.

 “Copy whatever you must if it helps you build stronger systems,” she charged.

 She further called for tighter collaboration between women-run businesses, mineral sourcing companies, beneficiation outfits and continental policy bodies—aligning all efforts with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 to secure women’s central role in Africa’s mineral value chains.

 The statement reaffirmed WiM-Africa’s commitment to a united, inclusive mining sector through its 2025–2030 Five-Year Action Plan, anchored on empowering women miners, strengthening cooperatives and expanding value addition across Africa.