The government is pursuing strategic bilateral agreements with resource-rich countries to support its railway transformation agenda to drive industrialisation and job creation.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, said the government was targeting countries with the financial capacity and technical expertise to partner Ghana in the rail sector, following significant progress in road and bridge construction.
Mr Ablakwa was speaking on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly in New York, last Monday after holding series of bilateral meetings.
"Ghana is moving in a strategic direction, signing a lot of bilateral agreements.
We are signing infrastructure agreements.
We are looking at establishing new opportunities, particularly for rail development.
We are doing well with road construction, with bridges.
What we need now are strategic partners to help us in the railway sector," he added.
Mr Ablakwa said in line with that, he had met counterparts from Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, describing them as big players who had the liquidity and could support President John Mahama's agenda for railway transformation.
"I just finished a good meeting with Qatar and Bahrain.
We discussed how they could support us add value to our natural resources, build more factories, because we have a very young population.
We don't want to see what happened in Ceuta, where an avalanche of 100,000 people from Morocco tried to enter Europe, and hundreds perished," he said.
The minister said meetings were also lined up with Norway, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany, which he also described as very strategic countries that could support Ghana's development agenda.
Other agreements
Mr Ablakwa said the government was also signing labour mobility agreements, visa waiver agreements, scholarship opportunities, and trade and investment agreements.
He said the bilateral drive was complementing Ghana's multilateral leadership on reparative justice and preparations towards assuming the African Union chairmanship, which had attracted interest from many countries about Ghana's vision for the continent.
"I have been sharing with them the contents of our AU strategic document which we submitted to President Mahama.
But beyond all this multilateral effort, it is the bilateral, country-specific projects that we want to deliver for our citizens," he added.
Mr Ablakwa
Processing
Mr Ablakwa said the government would no longer export its natural resources in raw form without adding value.
He said he had lined up more than 20 carefully curated bilateral meetings with big, well-resourced actors to ensure a win-win outcomes.
"I don't come out of a meeting without anything positive. It's not just about handshakes; it's not just about photo opportunities, it is about concretely what we can deliver for our citizens — job creation, industrialisation, real development and value addition," he said.
