By James Amoh Junior
Accra, Sept. 21, GNA – Ghana is seeking bilateral partnerships to drive job creation, industrialisation, value addition and infrastructure development, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Minister of Foreign Affairs, has said.
He said the Government was pursuing labour mobility, visa waiver, scholarship, trade and investment, and infrastructure agreements with strategic partner countries to secure tangible benefits from its international engagements.
Mr Ablakwa said this when he spoke to journalists on the margins of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
He said Ghana was particularly seeking strategic partners to support its railway development agenda, following progress in road and bridge construction.
“What we need now are strategic partners to help us in the railway sector,” he said.
Mr Ablakwa said he had been engaging Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which had significant financial resources that could support Ghana’s railway transformation agenda.
He said further meetings had been lined up with Norway, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany, which he described as strategic countries that could support Ghana’s development agenda.
The Minister said the bilateral engagements were being pursued alongside Ghana’s multilateral diplomatic initiatives, including its leadership on reparatory justice and preparations to assume the African Union (AU) chairmanship.
He said several countries had expressed interest in Ghana’s strategy for the AU, adding that he had been sharing with them the contents of Ghana’s AU strategic document submitted to President John Dramani Mahama.
“Beyond all of this multilateral effort, it’s the bilateral, country-specific projects that we want to deliver for the Ghanaian people,” he said.
Mr Ablakwa said job creation, industrialisation, value addition and resource sovereignty were central to the Government’s bilateral engagements.
He said his recent meetings with Qatar and Bahrain had included discussions on supporting Ghana to add value to its natural resources and establish more factories.
“We have a very young population. We want to create opportunities in Africa, in our country, in Ghana,” he said.
The Minister said Ghana must ensure that its natural resources were not exported cheaply in their raw form but processed locally to create jobs and support industrial development.
“Job creation, industrialisation, real development, value addition, making sure there’s resource sovereignty, that our natural resources are not just offered for cheap, without adding value, industrialising and creating jobs for our people,” he said.
Mr Ablakwa said he had more than 20 bilateral meetings scheduled with carefully selected strategic countries and major actors, aimed at establishing mutually beneficial partnerships.
“I don’t come out of any meeting without anything positive. It’s not just about handshakes, it’s not just about photo opportunities. No. It’s about concretely what we can deliver for the Ghanaian people,” he said.
On the preservation of cultural artefacts being returned to Ghana, the Minister said the Government had made provision in the 2027 Budget for the establishment of a modern museum.
He said Ghana needed a modern facility capable of receiving and preserving the thousands of artefacts expected to be returned from various countries.
“Ghana doesn’t have a modern museum, so we are working on that, so that we can have a modern museum that will receive all of these artefacts,” he said.
Mr Ablakwa said the museum would create opportunities for tourism and employment, both during its construction and after completion.
He said the returned artefacts could also attract international visitors and generate economic opportunities for the country.
The Minister cited the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park as an example of a major tourist attraction and said a museum housing artefacts returned from countries including the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal and France could similarly attract visitors.
He said the Government was also preparing a special museum for the preserved head of King Badu Bonsu II, the Ahanta king who was beheaded by the Dutch after resisting their authority.
Mr Ablakwa said the preservation of the king’s remains would form part of efforts to promote truth-telling about Ghana’s history and African resistance to the transatlantic slave trade.
“King Badu Bonsu II’s head will serve as an eternal memorial to the fact that there was resistance. We fought back, and our chiefs even paid the ultimate price,” he said.
The story would help counter narratives that Africans did not resist enslavement and colonial domination.
Mr Ablakwa said the Government was investing in facilities for the preservation of returned artefacts and developing a policy and strategy to ensure that the museums were properly managed.
GNA
Edited by Kenneth Sackey
Reporter: James Amoh Junior
Email: [email protected]