The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) is scheduled to organize a diaspora investment summit.
CEO of GIPC, Yofi Grant, made this known in an address to the media in Accra on Sunday, June 20, 2021, at the Information Ministry.
According to him, the summit
will take place on 23rd and 24th June 2021.
He said the summit will be held at the Kempinski Gold Coast City Hotel.
He said summit is themed “The New Normal, leveraging Diaspora investments to build back better”.
According to Mr Grant, the summit will create an avenue to foster partnerships between local and Diaspora investors, and showcase Ghana as a choice destination for doing business, to spur the inflow of Diaspora Direct Investments.
He indicated that the summit will bring together various primary stakeholders to steer conversations on the Ghana-Diaspora business relationship.
He said the speakers for the summit include: the Secretary General of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, Wamkele Mene, Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Ibrahim Mohammed Awal.
The summit is consistent with the recent “Beyond the Return” initiative, which is a follow-up to the “Year of Return” campaign that was launched in 2019, he said.
He added that the summit is expected to engender a more constructive interaction with Africans in the diaspora and all people of African descent in areas such as trade and investment, as well as skills and knowledge development.
It will be recalled that while commemorating the ‘Year of return’, the President, President Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo stressed on the need to effectively mobilize and engage the diaspora as active partners in the nation’s development.
“Let us all remember that the destiny of all black people no matter where they are in the world is bound up with Africa. We must help make Africa the place for investment, progress and prosperity and not from where our youth flee in the hope of accessing the mirage of a better life in Europe or the Americas” he said.
“I’m confident that the summit will thus open the door for partnerships and encourage sustained home-based investments by persons in the diaspora, as we consider them as our partners in development”, Mr Grant said.
The Ghana Diaspora Investment Summit is being held under the auspices Mr Akufo-Addo and supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ministry of Information, the Diaspora Affairs Office at the Office of the President, Diaspora Africa Forum, and Beyond the Return Secretariat under the Ghana Tourism Authority.
By Melvin Tarlue