Ghana has been named as one of the three countries in Africa to benefit from the Germany’s “Compact with Africa” Programme – a programme that will assist Ghana improve conditions for sustainable private sector investment, investment in infrastructure, economic participation, and employment in the country.
This was made known by the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, at a meeting with the Ghanaian community resident in Germany, on Sunday, June 11, 2017, held in honour of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in Berlin.
Ken Ofori-Atta explained that the Compact with Africa Programme, initially, had Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Morocco and Rwanda, being the countries that had been signed onto the Compact.
Only three countries out of the five, he said, were to be beneficiaries of €100 million that came along with signing the Compact.
According to the Finance Minister, however, Ghana has been chosen to be one of the countries signed onto the Compact “because of what President Akufo-Addo has done. It is essentially because there is a new confidence that Ghana is coming back, and Ghana is back. We were nowhere near it (Compact with Africa Programme). But the work President Akufo-Addo has been doing resulted in the Germans saying, ‘why don’t we get Ghana involved in this?’ And, that is why we are here.”
Ken Ofori-Atta noted that this development “was a real sign of confidence for us. We thought that it was over. Then they (Germans) came back a couple of weeks later, in March 2017, and said that ‘we should put our money where our mouth is. So let us select 3 countries in Africa where we can have a bilateral relationship with, and they selected two of the countries who were already in the Compact – Tunisia and Cote d’Ivoire – and they said Ghana be part of it, i.e. the third country’”.
Her continued, “They also said here is another 100 million Euros, do something with it. So you are beginning to see the response the world is having. We are beginning to see a sense of a regeneration, the Black Star is shining again. We certainly are not a poor country, as President Akufo-Addo said. We are also not chickens, as Aggrey said, we are eagles and, as such, we should fly.”
