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• The Kenyan High Commissioner to West Africa, Mr Tom Amolo (3rd -left) at a flower  stand at the Kenya Trade expo 2015 at the Labadi Beach Hotel in Accra. With him are Ms Carole Kariuki(right),Chief Executive of Kenyan Private Sector Alliance, and Mr Alex Twumasi(left) of the GIPC.

Maiden Kenya Trade Expo held in Accra

The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has averagely registered foreign direct Investment of $ 4.3 billion per year over the last five years.

This has come as a result of a renewed approach towards a more focused investment drive initiated by the centre to promote specific priority investment projects which made it easy for investors to make the investment decision.

Mr Alex Twumasi, Senior Investment Officer of GIPC who announced this at the opening of the maiden Kenya Trade Expo in Accra, said the centre had also recorded 22 investment projects from Kenya with an investment value of $193 million from  1994 to June 2015.

 

Explore opportunities

The three-day expo which had the theme: “The Role of Pan-African Investments in Ghana’s Growth”, was aimed at creating a platform for Ghanaian and Kenyan businesses to explore partnership opportunities.

The expo brought together both Kenyan and Ghanaian businessmen and traders who exhibited their products with the aim of deepening the existing investment and trade ties between the two countries.

Mr Twumasi said that Ghana had witnessed several Pan-African investments, including flagship projects such as UBA, Zenith and GT banks from Nigeria, and added that similarly, Ghana’s UT Bank and First Atlantic Merchant Bank were all expanding into other African countries.

“I am reliably informed that the biggest radio station in Kenya, Radio Africa, is owned by a Ghanaian. Clearly Pan-African investments hold the potential to propel growth and development in our countries”, he said.

African markets

The Senior Investment Officer said connecting Africa’s markets and investing in the entire value chain across sectors would be the key driver for the region in boosting intra-African trade since data from the Africa Competitiveness Report 2015, suggested that to date, only 11.3 per cent of trade in Africa was intra-regional.

He also said according to the report, total exports of African countries were heavily skewed towards the export of raw minerals and that  Africa’s population of over one billion people represented a large emerging consumer market and labour force that provided significant growth opportunities. 

According to Mr Twumasi, the ties between Ghana and Kenya date back to the precolonial days when Ghana's First President, Kwame Nkrumah and Kenya's first President, Jomo Kenyatta, united in anti-colonial crusades.

Respectable growth

Mr Twumasi said a 2014 report published by the Oxford Business Group (OBG) said Ghana, in 2013, achieved a respectable growth rate of 7.1 per cent, compared to three per cent for the world economy, 4.7 per cent for sub-Saharan Africa and 1.3 per cent for advanced economies.

“As a matter of fact, Ghana, has for the past five years consistently achieved a GDP growth rate of well over five per cent year-on-year. Investors globally, therefore, feel safe to retain, re-invest and grow their investments in Ghana”, he said.  

The country’s strategic location, as the landmark closest to the centre of the world, and serving as a gateway to the sub- region, offers time advantages, allowing easy access to markets on other continents and to the West African market.

For his part, Mr Stephen Normeshie, General Manager of the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA), said Africa was confronted by challenges of economic development and poverty eradication so it was time for African leaders, as agents of change, to renew and redouble their efforts to accelerate the development of their countries.

Goods and services

The Kenyan High Commissioner for West Africa, Mr Thomas Amolo, said the expo presented another important opportunity for Ghana and Kenya to showcase their goods and services and the unlimited choices they offered consumers and investors.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, Mrs Carole Kariuki, said the private sector had a role to play in expending investments.

Mrs Leah Nduati Lee, Co-Founder of the Kenyan Trade Expo, said the event marked another step in establishing a long-lasting relationship between the gateway to East Africa and gateway to West Africa.

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