Ghana to step-up relations with Japan - Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey

The Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, says Ghana is stepping up its relations with Japan to attract technology and industry giants in the Asian State to drive government's agenda of moving Ghana from a raw material production economy into an industrialized and technologically driven one.

The Minister made the assertion in a bilateral meeting behind closed doors with her counterpart, Taro Kono of Japan on the sidelines of the 7th TICAD Ministerial conference held in Tokyo.

Speaking to the media after the session with the Japanese Foreign Minister, Hon. Ayorkor Botchwey intimated that Ghana was poised to take advantage of the best practices from Japan’s industrialized economy.

"I believe that if we want to leapfrog in having very sophisticated technology, we need to be learning from best practices. Japan. We don't want to re-invent the wheel, they have already done it and we just need to learn from them," Ghana's Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Minister, Hon. Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said.

According to the Hon. Minister her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono, has pledged his country’s commitment to link Ghana up with Monorail companies in Japan to assist the country with the development of a monorail system of transportation as exist in several cities in Japan. The initial target she says, will be to have such metro rails in the capital city Accra and subsequently to other regions of the country.

In a related development, Chairman of the Ghana-Japan Parliamentary Friendship League Manabu Sakai, pledged to broker Japanese Direct Investment in Ghana's emerging railway sector when he called on Hon Ayorkor Botchwey in Tokyo.

The Japanese lawmaker said endorsements from his colleagues in the Diet of Japan (bicameral legislature) which comprises a lower house, the House of Representatives and an upper house, the House of Councillors will bolster plans to deliver quality infrastructure to Ghana.

Discussions are however expected to translate into concrete and measurable projects as President, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo Addo readies for a state visit to Japan at the invitation of Prime Minister, Shinz? Abe, later this year.