President Nana Akufo-Addo
President Nana Akufo-Addo has asked the global investor community to turn their eyes on Africa for the continent’s new frontier for manufacturing, technology, and food production.
“Our message to the global investor community is, therefore, this: Africa is ready for business. Africa needs you and you need Africa,” he said at the 77th Session of the United Nations, currently underway in New York, USA.
President Akufo-Addo explained that the global investor community needs Africa because it is busily building the world’s largest single market of 1.3 billion people.
“Soon we will have a customs union, and soon we will have a continental payment system that will accelerate and facilitate trade amongst ourselves,” he stressed.
According to him, Africa sees the current geopolitical crisis as an opportunity to rely less on food imports from outside the continent, while it uses its 60 per cent global share of arable lands to increase food production.
“We have seen the devastating impact of relying on Russia and Ukraine for 70 per cent of our wheat consumption. We have enough land, enough water, enough gas and enough manpower to produce enough fertiliser, food and energy for ourselves and for others,” he noted.
The President said the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which has its secretariat located in Ghana, is driving an “intra-Africa trade and creating an unparalleled momentum for Africa’s economic diversity and transformation.”
Ghana
In Ghana, the President told the gathering that his government had set in motion industrialisation programmes, promoting ‘One District One Factory’ in districts across the country.
According to him, the policy, which has been backed with incentive packages, has seen the establishment of 125 enterprises in various districts across the country, leveraging on each area’s competitive advantage.
“That is why, six years ago, my government embarked on an aggressive policy of planting for food and jobs, which has helped our farmers to increase their yields in folds.
“Indeed, we are recognising that many of the things we import can be found or produced in Ghana, or in other African countries,” he asserted.
President Akufo-Addo indicated that Ghana had taken policy measures to add value to its natural resources due to the country’s knowledge that industrialisation is the way to go and, with the single market as the added incentive.
“For example, we are processing more of our cocoa, refining more of our gold, and we are determined to exploit the entire value chain of our huge lithium deposits.
“We are busily building an integrated bauxite and aluminium industry and an integrated iron and steel industry, building new oil refineries and have, so far, attracted six of the world’s biggest automobile manufacturers to set up assembling plants in Ghana, prior to producing them in the country,” he pointed out.
SDGs
In line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), President Akufo-Addo said Africa’s ambition is to transform its food systems over the next decade, anchored in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth.
“What we require now is support from the investor community for the rolling out of Africa’s lucrative agro-industry, and for the community to see agribusiness in Africa as much more an opportunity than the perceived, exaggerated risk which has been the false, but dominant narrative,” he added.
The President tasked the UN “to take proper stock of this initiative and ask a few searching questions, recognising what could have been achieved with greater commitment and focus.”
By Ernest Kofi Adu