What works: Newmont’s Sustainable Corporate Impact Investment approach to improving livelihoods within mining communities

July 29, 2025

With Newmont’s impact investment into agricultural processing now creating measurable impact, we take a look back at 7 years of partnership and how Newmont has successfully trialled a new approach to Corporate Social Responsibility through impact investing.

In 2018, Newmont Corporation, the world’s largest gold mining company, came to us with a problem. Newmont’s vision had been to create value for the communities surrounding its Ahafo mine site. However, there was growing expectation for jobs in the local community, despite Newmont’s mining operating at full employment capacity, and significant spending on infrastructure through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. At this point, Innovest facilitated a strategic rethink with Newmont leadership to solve the question: How can we provide long-term solutions to social and economic development that creates non-mining employment and increase incomes in local economies?

Moving beyond traditional CSR 

Prior to 2018, Newmont’s CSR activities within its Local Economic Diversification Support (LEDS) initiative, primarily relied on traditional community development activities – grant-funding for local infrastructure development, including investments into schools and hospitals, roads, power and water. Whilst undoubtedly important, these proved limited in achieving long-term economic growth and employment, the core concerns of the youth in the area. 

Instead, Newmont decided to try a more targeted approach to local economic diversification, and brought Innovest on as strategic partners. Together, drawing on the playbook from the impact-investment industry, we co-developed a Corporate Social Investment strategy that sought to invest directly from the endowment of the existing Newmont Ahafo Development Foundation (NADeF) into local sectoral opportunities (agriculture, financial inclusion, tourism etc)  with the objective to increase the number of good quality jobs and improve incomes for people working in other sectors beyond mining

Identifying opportunities for catalytic impact 

With this objective, Innovest conducted an opportunity scoping exercise for impact-focused investments, working together with local fund manager Injaro Investments  through 2018 and 2019. This scoping focused on (1) what opportunities existed (2) how much impact could be achieved through each opportunity (3) who Newmont could partner with to increase impact and (4) how could Newmont measure the impact being created. 

Our scoping identified the Asutifi Processing and Services Centre (APSC) as an opportunity with significant impact potential. By investing in the APSC, Newmont could achieve impact through multiple pathways, summarised within a Theory of Change. First, the APSC would engage with supplier farmers, providing inputs on credit, technical training, and access to ready markets at an agreed price. This would create better trained farmers with higher yields and incomes, and the associated wider impacts on poverty reduction and indirect employment. Second, the APSC would directly employ local people, providing skilled employment to members of the community. Third, with high quality produce and a professional workforce, the APSC would form partnerships with off-takers. These relationships would provide indirect access to regional and national markets previously inaccessible by individual smallholders. Finally, with a proven model that could provide commercial returns, the APSC would seek to attract investment from sources beyond Newmont, scaling its operations and impact.

In 2021, Newmont initiated a $4 million revamp of the Centre, which included refurbishing the facilities, buying new processing machinery, hiring a new management team, and setting up operations, securing of commercial offtake agreements and training of supplier farmers. Alongside this, Innovest acted as the Impact Measurement and Management partner, gathering critical data and presenting this to the APSC’s board to help inform impact-related decision making and reporting.

Newmont Corporate Social Investment – Theory of Change

Using data for impact

Since its establishment, the APSC has delivered measurable impact. And with Innovest leading data collection analysis and reporting, we have seen first-hand the value the APSC has created. Our impact measurement solutions have now evolved to include both facility-level data to understand both commercial and impact performance, and community-level data, to hear first hand from community members about the impacts being felt from Newmont’s investment into the APSC.

This dual measurement approach helps the APSC go beyond output reporting, demonstrating real changes for people’s lives within the Ahafo region.

Between 2023 and 2024, the APSC achieved:

At the Facility level:	At the community level
Over 1,000 farmers received technical assistance to improve farming practices.	380% increase in inputs used for chilli farmers, due to increased access and credit availability
303 tonnes of ginger and chili sold to the APSC.	37% higher revenues for ginger farmers, with better prices paid by the APSC, and farmers using more land.
25 full-time jobs and 10 seasonal roles.	19% – 36% increase in profit for farmers.
	30% increase in temporary employment on ginger farms.
	Positive change in qualitative measures of attitudes toward agriculture.

Considerations for Corporates Seeking Effective Social Investment Programmes

The success of Newmont’s approach has valuable insights for both mining and non-mining corporations, and illustrates the value of partnerships for impact. Core principles for corporates seeking to develop an impact investing approach include:

• Intentionality: Design strategies with a focus on long-term impact and providing necessary resources. Newmont did this by gathering leaders within the business to agree on a strategy with long-term impact at its core, and financing the implementation of this strategy.
• Community Engagement:  Collaborate with local stakeholders to ensure initiatives are relevant, impactful, and sustainable. Newmont invested time up-front to understand the community’s concerns and the APSC has maintained engagement with community leaders.
• Data: Use structured frameworks that enable the collection and use of data to continuously enhance outcomes and deepen impact. Newmont has been committed to generating impact data, instituting a robust data collection system that the APSC uses to measure and report on impact performance at the facility and community level.
• Partnerships: Collaborate with like-minded organizations to enhance outcomes and impact. Newmont identified its strengths, but also where it needed support, and found partners to cover these. For example, by partnering with development organisations such as German GIZ for training, with Injaro for investment management, and Innovest for impact strategy and reporting.

Empower sustainable change with Innovest Advisory

Innovest Advisory’s expertise in impact strategy advisory and execution support positions it as an ideal partner for corporations seeking to develop and implement sustainable social investment strategies in their communities of operation. If your corporation is interested in exploring a path to sustainable social impact and achieving meaningful, long-term benefits for stakeholders in the communities in which you operate, the team at Innovest is ready to engage with you.