Ghana has indicated commitment to continue its strategic cooperation with Germany to maintain the long-standing and cordial relations between the two countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration has said.
The two countries are also committed to work on other projects such as the ‘Digital Ghana Agenda’, which involves the digitisation of services and processes in the country to optimise efficiency and effectiveness. Such cooperation is additionally covered in the field of E-waste management.
Already, both countries have collaborated on a wide range of bilateral and multilateral programmes, including security, diplomacy, economic cooperation, trade, investment, technology transfer, cultural engagements, human resource development and capacity building, among others.
Trade and investment
According to the Ministry, Ghana is one of Germany’s most important trading partners in sub-Saharan Africa with regard to trade and investment.
Ghana’s main exports to Germany include aluminum, timber and wood products, cocoa beans and cocoa products, jewelry, precious and semi-precious stones, gold, vegetable oils and fats, fresh tropical fruits and handicrafts. Germany, on the other hand, exports motor vehicles, machines and chemical products to Ghana.
The Ministry referred to data by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) which indicated that a total number of 197 German investment projects were registered within the period September 1994 to 2022. Also, FDI amounted to US$86.18million with an estimated employment creation for over 6,930 Ghanaians.
In the area of health, the Foreign Ministry said the German government supported Ghana at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic with €25 million worth of COVID-19 relief support in boosting the infectious diseases management capacity of the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) and the Takoradi Regional Hospital.
“Further collaboration in the health sector was established when the Governments of Ghana, Rwanda and Senegal entered a joint partnership with German Biotechnology Company, BioNTech SE, to manufacture, fill, finish and package BioNTech mRNA vaccines for Covid-19, Malaria and Tuberculosis. This partnership will position Ghana to meet its vaccine needs and those of Africa at large,” it added.
The Ministry also referred to Ghana’s membership of the G20 “Compact with Africa” (CwA), which made the country one of the first African countries to have signed the Compact launched under the German G20 Presidency in 2017.
The engagement under the Compact is important as Ghana advocates for an Africa Beyond Aid to foster sustainable growth in Africa.
Security
During a meeting with Germany’s Deputy Minister of the Federal Foreign Office, Katja Keul, on the sidelines of the just-ended Heads of State Summit of the Accra Initiative, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey re-echoed President Nana Akufo-Addo’s statement, saying, under the Accra Initiative, troops were not required from countries as had been done under the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).
It is worth noting Germany’s tangible assistance for the Accra Initiative in diverse ways, according to the Ministry.
In Ghana, Germany is supporting an Accra initiative Centre by working with the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) in the most vulnerable areas in the provision of relevant equipment and the construction of required facilities. This move by Germany has added impetus to the objectives of the Accra initiative to exchange intelligence, build capacity, and provide logistics to augment what Ghana offers against terrorist forces in the Sahel and which threaten the Sahelian region and coastal West Africa.
On the multilateral front, the Ministry has noted that Ghana’s membership of the UN Security Council provides further opportunity to promote international peace and security from the perspective of our common aspirations.
This is manifest, especially, in how Ghana and its partners positively respond to any action by any State that breaches the United Nations Charter and threatens the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a country.
Ghana, the Ministry added, will therefore continue to enhance partnerships through burden-sharing with Germany, especially in the areas of intelligence sharing, logistics, capabilities and training of relevant security personnel.
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