A Nigerian mining businesswoman named Emotan Josephine Aburime-Shine is devoted to finding answers to the issue of needlessly exporting all of her country’s raw materials to wealthier nations. In order to improve the value of Nigeria’s raw materials on the export market, the businessman has established companies to mine and process them.
Emotan recalled how, at an early age, she rose to the position of director at her mother’s frozen fish company to Billionaires Africa. She went there to assist during the holidays, which gave her the idea to start her own business; becoming a mother at the age of 21 further stoked her desire to achieve greatness.
While residing in the United Kingdom, she started to build contacts with foreign suppliers, and she credits this for the majority of the crucial connections her family business, Vesa Group, has today. By the age of 16, she had already begun her career as a recording artist, but she was too busy raising her young family and expanding the family company to devote enough time to her music career.
In 2015–2016, Emotan relocated back to Nigeria and made contact with individuals working in the country’s mining sector. The young leader claimed that she only intended to purchase and hold Nigerian diamonds as an investment, therefore she pursued mining by first obtaining a license. But as time went on, she saw how seriously underdeveloped the mining industry was.
“As I dug deeper, I saw just how badly Nigeria was being robbed of her resource wealth, particularly from unscrupulous foreign businessmen who come in Nigeria, mine our resources, and smuggle them out of the country without remitting taxes to the Nigerian government or improving the communities they steal so blatantly from,” she said, adding that she felt mining was a calling from God to step in – a call she chose to answer.
After that decision, she registered two mining companies – Emotan Global Ventures, to explore gold on-site in Abuja, and Piramen Ventures to focus on Gemstone mining, processing, and trading. She also decided that her companies would set out to discover mining sites and document them, and also offer proper training to the local communities on how best to recognize the materials within their communities, sensitize them on the value of the materials to reduce exploitation, and teach them safe mining practices.