Nigerian scholar paves way for AI development in African mining industry

By Ahmed Adamu, PhD A research by a Nigerian PhD scholar – Fardeen Abdulrahman Dodo, of Katsina – has discovered a significant new paradigm in the possibility to drive sustainable mining through understanding how different forms of entrepreneurship create benefits or harm across place and time, rather than the design of a pre-determined set of […]

By Ahmed Adamu, PhD

A research by a Nigerian PhD scholar – Fardeen Abdulrahman Dodo, of Katsina – has discovered a significant new paradigm in the possibility to drive sustainable mining through understanding how different forms of entrepreneurship create benefits or harm across place and time, rather than the design of a pre-determined set of regulations in Africa.

The mineral mining industry in Africa is a fire that warms and burns. While it provides a hope of economic opportunity, it also comes with a considerable degree of socio-economic, legal, and environmental challenges that particularly affect the remote communities in rural Africa. Fardeen’s work offer fresh insights into how the plethora of policy attempts to drive successful mining, over the years, have met limited success.

Fardeen, who was formerly a lecturer at the American University of Nigeria, had for long studied how entrepreneurs create social impact while generating wealth for the local communities, but his PhD programme at Alma Mater Studiorum – The University of Bologna, which is the oldest, continuously running university in the world, had him immerse more deeply in researching entrepreneurship and social impact, leading him to also examine why some forms of entrepreneurship create, rather than solve social problems. The study was done with the support of professors Paola Giuri, Leonardo Corbo and Laura Toschi of University of Bologna Management School, and others from various top universities, including the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and City, University of London’s Bayes Business School. The study leveraged a wide range of insights from direct primary data, to 50,000+ mining license entries, 1000+ press articles to conflict databases, and satellite images to examine the co-evolution of different types of entrepreneurships and their social, economic, and environmental impacts on society, within the mining industries of West Africa.
The results are leading to many intriguing, yet beneficial insights. First, mining locations that had the most social, economic, and environmental benefits of mining were those with greater collaboration between structural (such as government, regulators and law enforcement) and social (such as traditional figures, non-profits and professional bodies) stakeholders. Second, as opposed to an expected competition between formal and informal mining activities, smaller formal mining entrepreneurs appeared to require above-average levels of artisanal mining to prosper in locations, given the benefits of artisanal miners in locating where minerals are. Third, conflicts do not appear to be significantly associated with mining activities, although areas with higher conflict levels experienced greater proliferation of mining activities.
These insights imply that optimising the social, environmental, and economic benefits of the mining industry requires the painstaking effort of understanding the benefits and harms of both formal and informal mining activities in specific locations and contexts, as well as targeting reward structures towards promoting specific forms of mining entrepreneurs to drive a prosperous growth of mining industries. This research is highly relevant because it has isolated the respective social, economic, and environmental aspects of different forms of mining, as they flow from particular forms of entrepreneurship, potentially enabling more specific and actionable interventions leading to desired outcomes. This approach starkly contrasts with the popular debates on failed African policies and the resource curse that have historically stifled progressive action. Finally, these insights are being used to design an Artificial Intelligence programme for promoting sustainable mining across Sub-Saharan Africa, where the promise of mining is unrealised.
As a result of the scientific importance and rigour of this work, as well as global benefits, the research has earned several scholarly awards, including the Best 3 Minutes Dissertation at Warwick Qualitative Research Festival in May 2024, and Outstanding Doctoral Research Award at the International Conference of Entrepreneurship, and Family Business and Sustainable Innovation at Jeddah in January 2025.
Besides, this work has been featured in several arenas of entrepreneurship research globally, including Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference, the world’s top disciplinary conference in entrepreneurship, and the Interdisciplinary Network of Technology and Entrepreneurship Conference in Africa – an African focus group of entrepreneurship researchers, and several others. Going forward, “I hope to advance my entrepreneurship research across Africa with an agenda to understand how harmful entrepreneurial behaviours can be reduced within the scheme of promoting high-impact sustainable ventures across the continent,” Fardeen said.

Ahmed Adamu is a Petroleum Economist and an Associate Professor at the Nile University. He wrote from Abuja.
About the Researcher: Fardeen Dodo is a Nigerian (from Katsina state) PhD candidate at the University of Bologna, recognised Student at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and a visiting Scholar at Bayes Business School, City University, London.