Ghana will soon replicate China’s success story – Akufo-Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says Ghana is aiming to replicate China’s development model, which has seen her, over the last three decades, creating progress and prosperity for the masses of the Chinese people.

According to President Akufo-Addo, the world is witnessing China’s aggressiveness towards development of the market economy on the wheels of industrialization.

The president, who was addressing a roundtable discussion in China, noted that this move by the Chinese government has lifted some half a billion people out of poverty, creating the world’s largest middle class in the process.

President Akufo-Addo said Ghana will soon emulate the successes of the Chinese people.

“Ghana is inspired by this model, and are trying to replicate same, through, inter alia, our industrialisation policy of ‘1-District-1-Factory’, and an increase in agricultural productivity through the programme for ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’.”

With China being Ghana’s largest trading partner, and for the majority of countries in Africa, the President noted that the continent is grateful for China’s support.

“I have urged others not to ignore Africa, and I am glad that China is, most certainly, not ignoring our continent.”

With the World Bank projecting that six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies this year, including Ghana’s, are in Africa, President Akufo-Addo indicated that the continent is rich in natural resources, and in possession of nearly 30% of the earth’s remaining mineral resources.

To this end, the President stressed that the resolve of his Government is to build a value-added, industrialised economy with a modernised agriculture, trading in the global marketplace on the basis of things it makes, and chart its own self-reliant, independent path within the world economic order.

“We believe that effective co-operation with China will help us attain this goal. Indeed, we want our relations with China to be characterised by an increase in trade and investment co-operation, and not by the export and import of raw materials,” he said.

This, he believed, is the way to develop healthy relations between Ghana and China, and, thereby, put Ghana at the high end of the value chain, and create jobs for the teeming masses of Ghanaians, particularly the youth.