President John Dramani Mahama has invited global investors to scale up their investments in Ghana.
He highlighted the potential in Ghana’s economy, for which investors must turn their eyes to the natural-resource-rich West African country.
Addressing the US-Ghana Presidential Roundtable on Wednesday, September 23, he stated that Ghana produces cocoa, gold, manganese, and many other commodities.
The farmers grow cashew nuts, shea fruits, vegetables, and grains, and yet too much still leaves our country in the raw form, while we import finished products that we could increasingly produce at home, he added.
This pattern must change if we are to create enough jobs and build stronger Ghanaian enterprises. Agriculture provides a good example, he said.
“Ghana is one of the world’s leading cocoa producers, but our interest cannot end with just exporting raw cocoa beans.
“Opportunities exist in cocoa processing, cashew, shea, horticulture, grains, poultry, livestock, and food manufacturing,” President Mahama said.
He added that processing more of what the farmers produce in Ghana creates a market for farmers, work for processors, businesses for suppliers, transporters, and jobs along the value chain.
“For an investor, Ghana’s domestic market is only one part of the opportunity. The African Continental Free Trade Area is bringing together a continental market of more than 1.4 billion people, and this secretariat is headquartered in Accra.
“And so a company that establishes production in Ghana should be thinking beyond our borders. It should look for opportunities across West Africa and the wider continent as implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area progresses. Do not look at Ghana’s 34 million population only for what you can sell there.”
He further invited investors to look at Ghana for what they can produce and sell across Africa and to the world.
“Ghana is also preparing to assume the chairmanship of the African Union, and we will use that responsibility to support Africa’s work on infrastructure, industrialization, regional integration, and implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area. Regional integration will also require roads, ports, reliable energy, digital connections, and efficient borders.
“These are all areas in which American businesses have a comparative advantage. We therefore see Ghana’s 2027 responsibility as an opportunity to advance an African economic agenda in which governments create conditions for growth, ushering in a new chapter in Ghana-United States economic relations,” he said.