Africa Rising - Ghana Focus

[Music] thanks for joining us for this first series of africa rising i'm adrian sapp and i'm bronwyn nielsen the ambitious and widely celebrated african continental free trade area went live on the 1st of january 2021 with a combined gross domestic product of 3.4 trillion us dollars linking 2 billion people and ultimately 55 african union states it's fitting that we begin our series in the republic of ghana home to the african continental free trade area secretariat grana played a central role in the actual negotiations of the cft between 2015 and 2018. ghana was one of the first countries to sign the cfta and was indeed also the first country to ratify the agreement the world is watching to see whether the secretary will indeed provide the springboard for africa's economic integration and rapid growth and i think the success of afcta will be determined by three things first and foremost as african countries have to make what other african countries consume and so there need to be some fundamental changes to what we export we can no longer continue to export raw produce but we have to be exporting finnish goods which other countries will buy and there are some very significant plans in place the president in the states of the nation's speech was announced talk about processing more about cocoa more industrialization more additional power you know to take advantage of that so that's number one number two is trade links and you know our traditionally the african continents trade links have been fantastic between africa and the rest of the world were pretty bad between the rest of africa and i know ghana's working very hard to revive its national shipping lines so that it should be as quick to move up and down the west coast of limits and services as opposed to you know it's quicker at the moment to send goes up to what's going back down to lagos and go straight across and i think thirdly bringing transparency to just the cost and i guess the friction cost of doing business i mean if you were to jump in a truck and go from south africa or from cape town to nairobi trying to deliver goods for sale the cost of doing that is significantly higher than if you were flying the goods and from china you know if you're driving goods from abigail to lagos that the cost of goods doing so significantly high and so you know at afct and ghana is very very much the center of working very closely to reduce those friction costs to increase the opportunities available for african companies to take advantage of this this new free trading zone and we believe that free free movement of goods particularly food items it helps food security it helps local manufacturers and eventually it helps farmers as well as more agro-processed commodities move around freely it definitely is a huge deal for africa and particularly for local manufacturers and farmers geography offers a first lens in considering our country's circumstances context and prospects the republic of ghana is in west africa and is situated on the coast of the gulf of guinea bordered by ivory coast burkina faso and togo geographically ghana is closer than any other country to the centre of the planet with on average eight hours of flying time to europe and the americas we are zero degrees place four degrees north and we're probably no more than five or six hours from any major city in the continent first and foremost the country has three major geographic regions coastal forest and northern savannah the boundaries however are not necessarily clearly defined or demarcated by far the smallest of the regions is the coastal zone which naturally is home to commercial and artisanal fishing industries and small-scale farmers the agricultural base and seaboard has made the region an important commercial hub the forest region occupies about one-third of the country and boasts rich agricultural lands almost all the timber cocoa mineral wealth as well as a number of cash crops grown for export and a large part of the foodstuffs consumed in ghana come from the forest region the northern savannah covers some two-thirds of the country but is economically the least developed of the three regions distance from the sea has historically stunted growth in this region explained and aggravated by infrastructure deficits the extents of savannah vegetation is well suited to livestock breeding with a population of 31 million people ghana ranks as one of africa's leading economies because of its considerable natural wealth its high per capita income in the region and by virtue of the fact that it was one of the first countries in africa south of the sahara to achieve independence from colonial rule more than half of ghana's population resides in urban centres and about two-thirds of ghanaians are under the age of 30 making for a young vibrant urbanized population accra is the most densely populated city in ghana and is home to an area known as the ministries where the country's government administration is located ghana enjoys a robust democracy and is ranked as the most stable political environment within the west african sub-region and fifth in africa the country has established democratic institutions and systems to ensure good governance and rule of law human rights lawyer nana akufo ado won the presidential election in december 2016 defeating incumbent john muhammad after a highly contested race that was seen as a test of the country's democracy in a region that is generally seen to be plagued by dictators and coups president akufa won re-election in december 2020 again defeating john mahama it has had a very stable democracy for over 25 years successive handovers of political power between you know very different center left and center right parties ghana also enjoys a high degree of media freedom and the private press and broadcasters operate without significant restrictions radio is ghana's most popular medium although it is being challenged by increased access to tv high growth momentum since 2017 has consistently seen ghana placed among africa's 10 fastest growing economies improvements in the macroeconomic environment has been accompanied by expansion and domestic demand due to increased private consumption a significant portion of gdp half of gdp is derived from the services city i think ghana has ambitions to beat the financial hub for for for the region um so the sectarian sitting in ghana plays an ideal role um to help governments enable that you know realization um and also it it will also attract investors to to ghana help governments with the objective of of becoming a an industrialization uh our country talking about industrialization ghana is already positioned as the manufacturing hub for many products in waste africa the larger africa tree treaty now enlarges the canvas for ghana manufacturers and equally some of us hope that this treaty will open the doors for nigeria as well so nigeria is part of the current ecowas treaty with some exceptions we believe with the larger treaty to be a game-changer for ghana if it can access nigeria for the last century coca has been the mainstay of the ghanaian economy with ghana the world's second largest producer of cocoa globally historically ghana has enjoyed a long robust relationship with switzerland being switzerland's largest trading partner in sub-saharan africa with substantial exports of cocoa and gold to switzerland however ghana no longer wants to be dependent on the export of raw materials including cocoa beans we intend to process more and more of our cocoa in our country with the aim of producing more chocolate ourselves because we believe that there can be no future prosperity for the canadian people in the short medium or long term if we continue to maintain economic structures that are dependent on the production and export of raw materials i think it's a well-known fact that when you look at the value chain for coco those who produce it and just takes four more beans only receive five percent or so of the value so it absolutely makes sense for us to process more because if we process more we're more likely to be able to capture more of the value chain and then maybe go into the manufacturing of chocolates and i think there is some work to be done which i mean ourselves in agriculture produce 70 of the world's cocoa it makes absolutely no sense for us to be sending that outside in order to um you know in order to to have it processed it can all be done here so i think that the world has changed now and the reality is is that things like afcta and the right sort of leadership will drive more value addition in the continent which will create more value and allow us to actually get rid of aid um ghana beyond aid is a catchword that's been a phrase has been around you know for five years now and we're now in the process of actualizing that today the export sector is dominated by gold and crude petroleum with ghana enjoying plentiful oil and natural gas reserves the ghanaian domestic market is important and the value of food produced for local consumption is considerable ghana is ranked the best place for ease of doing business in west africa that's according to the ease of doing business report 2019 the world economic forum's global competitiveness index 2018 rates the country as the most competitive economy in the west african sub-region and number 10 in sub-saharan africa and e-y's 2018 attractiveness survey places it as the second most attractive fdi destination in west africa and puts it at number seven in sub-saharan africa as we stated earlier ghana is geographically closer than any other country to the center of the planet with an average of eight hours of flying time to europe and the americans the refurbished kotoka international airport is world-class and key to the west african region serving numerous flights from within the continent europe and the rest of the world ghana is also home to tema one of west africa's largest ports a good network of trunk roads and immediate access to the market of over 350 million people of the economic community of west african states ecowas all reinforce ghana's position as a leading destination in west africa as in the rest of the world the shock caused by the covet 19 pandemic has had considerable impacts on ghanaian businesses and many companies have had to cut costs by reducing staff hours cutting wages and in some cases laying off workers the ghanaian government did however move very quickly to put in place diverse support for business including the establishment of a coronavirus alleviation program to protect jobs livelihoods and support small business earlier this month we celebrated the arrival of vaccines on the continent and ghana was one of the first countries in africa to receive the covert 19 vaccines it has been fortunate in having a leader who reacted quite quickly when it came to the beginning of the pandemic when things were unclear we had the borders shut down the country shut down and so that significantly limited the spread um we had some very good communication so we were regularly updated along the way um and we were able to put together the country was able to put together a team who were able to make representations to kovacs to the point where you know globally we were the first country to have our plan approved in the vaccine delivered uh kovid could have been a big variation uh thankfully it was not he had a fairly normal season last year including the two crops that we are associated in in ghana as olam coco and cashew largely went normal i think kobe as has happened everywhere has had a negative knock-on effect on most economies ghana inclusive and also households and businesses but i should say that just by these negative effects the government including all stakeholders have managed it very well to date i mean as best as they can giving the resources that we have and this pandemic has taught us a number of things um it starts us even to reinforce our role as a bank to really be here to to support the social economic development of the markets that we we operate in as in the rest of the world the migration to the use of digital solutions went a long way to maintaining business continuity and the subsequent acceleration of digitization will ultimately increase productivity and ensure additional resilience to future challenges [Music] has indicated that all gonads will be vaccinated how the country will secure enough doses is not yet clear and there are questions around how those doses will be stored and distributed as well as questions around the capacity of the country's existing cold chain infrastructure and there is also a major final hurdle to clear convincing many skeptical ghanaians that the vaccines on offer are safe and effective as in many parts of africa fake news and misinformation on social media and in certain certain quarters of the popular press are fanning those embers but the good news is that ghana's immunization infrastructure does have an enviable record with immunisation coverage that has helped reduce infant mortality and the incidence of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles in further testimony to ghana's innovative culture a startup out of ghana tech lab incas diagnostics has developed a rapid test that detects coveted 19 antibodies increase has been working on the tests since february 2020 and it takes 15 to 20 minutes to get results with the test incas is currently waiting for fda approval concerning the test kit and has ambitions to expand to other countries on the continent in the years ahead with other tests on their product list we caught up with francisca adomarco chief technology officer at incas diagnostics to discuss the breakthrough i speak to you now we actually have two covered products we have one for um the antibodies and one for the antigen so what we did alongside working on the antibody test was develop the antigen test and as i speak to you now we have put both together the antibody test that we have to rework on and then the antigen test that we have will develop there are some amazing innovations taking place in ghana at the moment and these innovations may well be exported across the west african region or perhaps within the context of the african continental free trade area across the whole of i think one great thing is the apps and the industry that the young entrepreneurs the youth are bringing up and i believe that they need all the resources to be able to succeed and also to to be a catalyst to the economy most so the government is launching a development bank and i guess this would be a game changer we now have a biometrically based national id card which has a 256-bit chip embedded in it um and so every adult above the age of 18 should have when i think 15.5 million have been issued and another couple of million to go that card from the 1st of june the number on your card will now become your tax number so that has been duplicated your national health number will now be kept on that card that card acts as a passport within ecowas and a number of other institutions that card is now essentially by law becoming the official id and it will have a multiple abuses which means that we're now beginning to get a fully integrated digitally based economy which will help us to you know your card has your biometric address it has your gps based address on it has your biometric details it has your mobile money account on it and you can imagine the power that has as as the manager use of these cut this card pro so that i think is incredibly innovative and will add you know percentages to gdp over time now the other thing you might read a lot about is is the delivery of medications and and vaccines as well using zipline we were the seed country to to back and get involved in zipline which is a drone delivery service um and rather than having you know sparsely uh or scarcely available medications are made up you know being held in different locations they're held in one location and i think within half an hour they can be dispatched and dropped almost any point in the country and i think you know the the younger generation we have on the ground and i spend quite a lot of time with them mentoring them the innovations coming through that in financial services in digital solutions in agriculture and and finance ghana is a hotbed of of innovation and more importantly it's incredibly cheap and incredibly safe uh an incredibly easy place to live and so we're seeing many many multinationals as we come to the end of our first country focus in our documentary series on africa rising it's abundantly clear that ghana has a very important role to play as we move into this next phase of africa's development the decade may have been born into crisis but the african economy sits on the cusp of transformation with the african continental free trade area offering the launch pad a platform for this game-changing opportunity in africa's economic story in our next series we focus on rwanda who continues to drive an ambitious economic agenda and is focused on positioning the country as a global hub for anyone thinking of doing business in africa

Channel: The Nielsen Network

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Id: 0QW2cMOQ-eY

Length: 18min 55sec (1135 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021