Sefwi Wiawso Manhene’s Son Makes Ghana Proud in USA
A metallurgist from Ghana named Festus Bumankama Agyapong brought honor to his country at the Kinross World Generation Gold Programme that took place this year in Alaska, United States of America.
The Generation Gold Program helps people get ready for engineering jobs in the mining industry.
In the program that assists in the development of capacities in the processing of a variety of metals and alloys, he was one of three graduates who stood out as very notable.
Over the course of the past three years, those who graduated this year have gained a wide range of experience while working in various global enterprises.
Festus Agyapong is currently stationed at Fort Knox, a United States military base located in the state of Kentucky. Fort Knox is where a lot of the official gold reserves that the United States has been kept.
The goal of the program is to help employees improve their leadership skills and grow as professionals.
It gives workers the opportunity to participate in a variety of activities that help them learn new skills, improve existing ones, and increase their overall knowledge base.
About Festus Bumankama Agyapong:
A member of the Council of State and the royal family, he is the son of Katakyie Kwasi Bumagama II Sefwi Wiawso Omanhene.
He went to the Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast for his primary education. He then went to Kumasi to continue his education at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
Festus spent his childhood in the Sefwi-Wiawso in the Western North Region of Ghana. He received a Bachelor of Science in Material Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. In 2012, he started his career as a junior metallurgist at Chirano Gold Mines in the Western North Region.
Festus had an interest in the Generation Gold program and thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to obtain experience working in a range of climates and cultures across the world. He considered it would be an excellent opportunity.
In 2019, he started working as a metallurgist at Bald Mountain in Nevada before enrolling in the program.
During this period, he worked throughout the Assay and Metallurgy Labs, where he was exposed to the management of ounce production, cyanide plant optimizations, and production reporting. In addition, he was involved in the production of production reports.
After working at the same location for a period of 18 months, Festus was offered a transfer to Fort Knox in Alaska. While there, he was given the opportunity to broaden his skill set and gain experience with new techniques in mine operations. These included working at one of the few cold-weather heap leach facilities in the world as well as working on project-specific tasks such as in-pit tailings and the Manh Choh project.
Festus was able to learn more about the industry because he took part in the program. He also gained a better understanding of the importance of health and safety and how the safety culture of our global operations can be transferred.
Festus has high aspirations to one day become the General Manager of a mine and is working hard to improve his leadership qualities.
Other people who have graduated from this program include Kwame Akomeah, who works as a geotechnical engineer on projects at Bald Mountain, and David Levine, who works as a specialist geologist in Paracatu.
Kwame Akomeah grew up in Accra, and in 2014 he got a Bachelor of Science in Geological Engineering from the University of Ghana.
His first job at Kinross was as an Industrial Engineering Intern at Chirano in 2013, where he acquired experience working in both open pit and underground mining operations. Since then, he has held various positions within the company.
In 2019, Kwame joined the Generation Gold program as a geotechnical engineer at our Fort Knox mine in Alaska. There, he helped unlock the project’s future potential and helped make software for interpreting Gil’s structural data in-house.
Kwame is currently working as a geotechnical engineer at Bald Mountain on a full-time basis after graduating from the program. He is helping with geotechnical analyses that are done in-house, which has cut out the need for outside contractors.
Kwame has aspirations of one day becoming a Superintendent in the mining industry and launching his own geotechnical consulting firm. He plans to achieve these goals by learning more about mining operations and geotechnical data all the time.