The Chief Operating Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotions Centre (GIPC) Mr. Carl Nelson, has called on African countries to collectively merge to foster trade on the continent.
According to him, Pan African investment holds the potential growth and development in Africa and the continent’s population of over one billion representing a large emerging consumer market and labour force that can provide significant growth opportunities within Africa.
Mr. Nelson said this when he was delivering his welcome address at the first edition of the Kenya Expo during the week in Accra.
He said, “Looking at Africa’s markets and investing in the entire value chain across all sectors will be a key driver for the region in boosting inter African trade”.
Current data from the African competitive report in 2015, suggests that to date, only 11.3 per cent of trade in Africa is inter regional. Total exports of African countries still targets the unrefined minerals and unprocessed agricultural crops such as cocoa, yams, grains, kola nuts and timber to countries outside the African continent.
”As business leaders, policy makers and investors, this is the time to partner and build strong bridges among regional countries, reduce trade barriers and tap Africa’s global competitiveness. The essence of such meeting is to facilitate discussions and draw some critical conclusions on the strength and weaknesses of our individual countries and seek partnership of growth and development”, he noted.
The GIPC, he said, had on the average registered Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) of $ 4.3 billion per year over the last five years which had come as a result of a renewed approach towards a more focused investment drive while the GIPC promoted specific priority investment projects to make it easy for investors to make investments decisions.
The GIPC has also recorded a total of 22 investment projects from Kenya with the total estimated value of $193 million from the period 1994 to June 2015.
”Ghana has witnessed a lot of Pan African investments including flash projects such as UBA Ghana, Zenith bank and GT bank all from Nigeria. Similarly, Ghana’s UT Bank and First Atlantic Merchant are all expanding into other African countries” he said.
GIPC currently is leading Ghana’s investment promotion drive to attract Pan African investments by creating partnerships across Africa for various forms of collaborations, networking, capacity building, knowledge sharing and enterprise developments.
Ghana now, he said, was focusing on creating an integrated industry by building linkages in the agric sector.
”Investments opportunities have been identified through analysis of a number of value chains based on their marked growth potential, investor interest, and contribution to development. Key among them include large scale mechanised farming, production and processing of rice, cashew, soya, oil palm and cassava, production and processing of poultry” he added.
Source: Graphic