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0 NewsGhana, Latest Updates and Breaking News of Ghana, News Ghana, https://www.newsghana.com.gh/vp-opoku-agyemang-calls-for-end-to-raw-material-exports/Vice President Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang has urged African countries to end their dependence on raw material exports and place women and youth at the centre of continental industrial transformation.
The Vice President delivered the remarks through Deputy Trade Minister Sampson Ahi at the Accelerate Africa’s Growth Connect 2026 conference, held on Africa Day at the University of Ghana Cedi Conference Centre. The event brought together delegates from more than 30 African countries to discuss industrial transformation, skills development and continental trade cooperation.
“That model has not served us, and we will not sustain it,” Opoku-Agyemang said, in reference to the long-standing economic pattern of exporting raw commodities while importing the finished manufactured goods that those same raw materials produce.
She said Africa must accelerate industrialisation and move decisively toward value addition, processing and manufacturing. The Vice President also placed gender and youth inclusion at the core of the transformation agenda, calling for economic policies that give women and young people meaningful roles in the continent’s industrial future rather than treating them as beneficiaries of programmes rather than drivers of growth.
The conference structured its agenda around four interconnected areas: policy and leadership, workforce development, job and wealth creation, and trade and knowledge exchange. The framing reflects growing recognition among African governments and private sector leaders that closing the continent’s industrial capacity gap requires simultaneous action on skills, finance, governance and market access.
The gathering takes place as African governments intensify implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which aims to expand intra-African trade and incentivise regional manufacturing and value addition as an alternative to commodity-dependent growth. Ghana has increasingly embedded industrialisation in its economic strategy, with particular emphasis on local processing, agribusiness expansion and technology-driven manufacturing as tools to reduce import dependence and absorb a growing youth workforce.
Nyakan June, founder and global chief executive of Twow Africa and the conference’s convenor, called on members of the African diaspora to take a more active role in supporting the continent’s industrialisation drive, framing diaspora investment and knowledge transfer as an underutilised resource in Africa’s economic transformation.
NewsGhana, Latest Updates and Breaking News of Ghana, News Ghana, https://www.newsghana.com.gh/vp-opoku-agyemang-calls-for-end-to-raw-material-exports/
