For more than two decades, Dr Steve Manteaw has worked across Ghana’s oil, gas and mining sectors, pushing questions of transparency, public accountability and responsible use of the country’s natural wealth.
Now, that body of work has received one of its strongest international endorsements.
Dr Manteaw has been named the recipient of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Global Chair’s Award, becoming the first Ghanaian to win the prestigious individual honour.
He received the award on Thursday, October 8, 2026, at the EITI Global Conference in Brussels, Belgium, alongside countries and individuals recognised for advancing transparency and accountability in natural resource governance.
The recognition caps a career that has taken Dr Manteaw from Ghana’s petroleum and mining policy debates to international resource governance institutions, while giving him a hand in some of the country’s most important conversations about how natural wealth should benefit citizens.
His work has covered petroleum revenue accountability, mining governance, fiscal systems, environmental policy, energy transition, illicit financial flows and public participation in resource management.
From Ghana’s oil boom to resource accountability
Dr Manteaw is perhaps best known nationally for his work with the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), where he served two terms as Chair.
PIAC was established to strengthen public oversight of Ghana’s petroleum revenues, and during his tenure, he became one of the more prominent voices explaining how oil revenues were being collected, allocated and used, while drawing attention to gaps in accountability.
He remains active in Ghana’s extractive governance architecture.
He currently co-chairs the Multi-Stakeholder Group of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI) with the Chief Director of the Ministry of Finance.
He is also a member of Ghana’s National Steering Committee of the Open Government Partnership and Convener of the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas.
These roles have placed him at the intersection of government, civil society and policy, where debates over Ghana’s natural resources often move from public concern to institutional reform.
His work goes far beyond oil
Dr Manteaw’s influence has not been limited to petroleum.
In 2015, he was lead consultant for Ghana’s Africa Mining Vision Gap Analysis, assessing the country’s mining sector against the continent’s broader ambition of using mineral wealth to drive sustainable development.
He has also worked extensively on Ghana’s energy transition, leading the development of the Ghana Oil and Gas Industry position paper on Energy Transition.
That work became increasingly important as Ghana grappled with how to pursue cleaner energy while protecting jobs, government revenues and economic interests linked to oil and gas.
In mining, he has promoted responsible industry practices through his membership of the adjudicating board of the Ghana Mining Industry Awards since its inception.
His current work also extends into the difficult challenge of illegal and informal mining.
He serves as a senior technical adviser to the UK-Ghana Gold Programme, supporting efforts to reform Ghana’s artisanal and small-scale mining sector and tackle risks associated with illicit financial flows.
A career with an international footprint
His expertise has also taken him beyond Ghana.
Dr Manteaw has undertaken research and consulting assignments for a range of institutions, including ActionAid Ghana, Ghana Oil and Gas for Inclusive Growth, the Petroleum Commission, the Natural Resource Governance Institute, the Sierra Leone EITI, the Ministry of Finance of Guyana, GIZ, the International Budget Partnership, the Ghana Upstream Petroleum Chamber and the Parliamentary Training Institute of Ghana.
Between 2009 and 2014, he served on the World Bank’s Extractive Industry Advisory Group in Washington.
He was also part of an international panel that reviewed the end-of-project report of Ghana’s Natural Resource and Environmental Governance programme, a 10-year initiative supported by the World Bank.
That combination of policy, research, civil society and institutional experience has made him a familiar figure in discussions about resource governance both in Ghana and internationally.
A Ghanaian award with a wider significance
The EITI Chair’s Award is particularly significant for Ghana because the country itself won the award in 2016 at the EITI Global Conference in Lima, Peru.
Ghana was recognised then for using EITI findings and recommendations to influence institutional and policy reforms.
Dr Manteaw was part of the Ghanaian delegation at that conference.
A decade later, he has returned to the EITI stage as the first Ghanaian to receive the award as an individual.
The EITI is a global benchmark for transparency in resource-rich economies and is currently implemented by 55 countries.
Its standards require participating countries to disclose and reconcile information covering areas such as taxes, royalties, surface rentals, revenue management, beneficial ownership and the local and national impacts of extraction.
Previous individual recipients include Senegalese public health and governance figure Awa Marie Coll-Seck, recognised for her leadership in implementing the 2023 EITI Standard, and Ukraine’s Oleksiy Orlovsky, honoured for civil society work to improve resource governance under difficult circumstances.
Countries including Argentina, Mauritania, Ukraine, Armenia, Colombia and Zambia have also received country-level recognition for progress in areas such as fiscal transparency, environmental reporting, digital disclosure and beneficial ownership.
For Dr Manteaw, the Brussels award brings international recognition to a career built largely around a difficult but fundamental question: how can countries with valuable natural resources ensure that the wealth beneath their soil and waters translates into lasting public benefit?
His record spans the boardroom, government policy discussions, civil society advocacy, international institutions and technical work on the ground.
The award is therefore not simply a recognition of one intervention or one institution.
It is a recognition of a sustained body of work across the many fronts on which Ghana’s natural resource future is being debated and shaped.
