Blessing Ramoba is the founder and president of the Mining Forum of South Africa whose main aim is to promote sound public policies in the mining industry.

Ramoba’s focus is also on educating the public about the benefits of mining and the enforcement of laws and regulations that govern the mining industry while building a strong, responsible and globally competitive South African mining and mineral processing industry that creates wealth and opportunity for all.

In 2017, Ramoba was awarded a certificate of appreciation for Advancing African Business in the Mining Sector by Mzanzi Business Forum.

He attributes his progress and success to a few disciplines that he has mastered. These include consistency, focus, responsibility, time management skills, planning and surrounding himself with positive and motivating people.

Inforgraphic by TYI

For Ramoba, a trailblazer is a passionate and motivated individual who consistently exhibits high levels of leadership, management, accountability, professionalism, integrity, conflict resolution, honesty, humility, respect, prioritising and wise decision making. His role model is Mahatma Gandhi, and he admires Gandhi’s unique approach to everything that he did

Sharing more about his work at the Mining Forum of South Africa, he explained that he volunteers his time to the organisation as it is a non-government organisation (NGO). Key to this work is effective leadership, as he also has to attract other volunteers to contribute their time and retain high-quality volunteers in order to sustain the organisation’s work.

His view is that young people in Africa are the continent’s greatest assets.

“Young women and men in Africa are resourceful and valuable – they should not be seen as a sectoral concern; neither are they an object trailing at the end of programmes of regional revival and socioeconomic integration. Instead, they should be seen as an integral part of the process of development across all sectors and fields of interest.”

For Ramoba the epitome of success would be to promote the Africa Programme of Action for Youth, which seeks to nurture youth to implement programmes of employment creation, contribute towards education and create awareness of the importance of political inclusion, citizenship and protection of human rights.

His vision is to contribute toward inspiring young people to desire excellence and be good role models of honesty, integrity and work ethic; playing an equal role as partners in developing their communities.