French President Emmanuel Macron has returned home after an official visit to Ghana.
While in the country, he held bilateral discussions with President Akufo-Addo.
President Macron was seen off at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) by Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia.
He is the first French President to visit Ghana since the latter attained independence.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said Ghana is ready to renew and deepen the ties of cooperation and friendship with France for the progress and prosperity of their respective countries and peoples.
“We want our relations with France to be characterised by an increase in trade and investment cooperation, not aid,” he stressed.
This, according to the president, “is the way to develop healthy relations between our two countries, and put Ghana at the high end of the value chain in the global market place, and create jobs for the teeming masses of Ghanaians, particularly the youth. Our vision is to build a free, prosperous, independent country – a Ghana Beyond Aid.”
The president noted that Ghana, under his leadership, has decided to turn her back on the old economy, which is dependent on the production and export of raw materials, stressing, “We want to build a value-added, industrialised economy with a modernised agriculture, which is neither victim nor pawn of the world economic order.”
Recounting the bond of friendship that exists between the two countries, President Akufo-Addo indicated that Ghana and France have strong ties in trade, investments, civil and security co-operation, amongst others, with statistics, indicating that French investments in Ghana totalled €1.5 billion in 2015, making Ghana the seventh biggest destination of French investments in sub-Sahara Africa.
President Akufo-Addo assured President Macron that Ghana stands shoulder-to-shoulder with France in the promotion of human rights on the African continent, the rejection of terrorism as a legitimate means of resolving political issues and “in attempting to develop our economies to provide opportunities for the citizens to fulfil their aspirations, especially the youth.”
He also expressed the appreciation of the Ghanaian people to “France’s courageous commitment and participation in the fight against terrorism in Mali and the rest of the Sahel, which has brought you (President Macron) to the region three times within this short period of six months of your stay in office.”
Source: Daily Guide
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Some have questioned why not involve the UN and the EU in solving the slave trade being perpetrated by ISIS? Well, the EU and some countries of the UN are the ones who spearheaded the actions in Libya which has triggered those crisis today. It was by a UNSC Res. 1973, where 10 countries voted for, and 5 abstained, against the intervention in Libya under the no-fly zone principle. There was operation harmattan-Sarkozy, operation ellamy-Cameron, operation mobile-Harper(Canada) and operation odyssey dawn-Obama. The countries that abstained from the UNSC resolution 1973 vote were Russia, Germany, China, India and Brazil. Those that voted for the adoption of the resolution to implement the no-fly zone, based off of some civil war in Libya were the US, UK, France, Portugal, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Nigeria, Gabon, Lebanon and Colombia. Today ISIS has taken over Libya and the country is a veritable hell hole of all that is wrong with human civilization. We are witnessing the unfolding of a gargantuan mess of unprecedented gross crimes against humanity of epic proportions. Indeed, India in abstaining from the vote, cited a lack of credible information on the ground in Libya for that kind of action. Effectively the EU and UN caused this mess. To understand how it must be solved, we need to understand how it came to be created in the first place(de-dollarization and the gold-backed standard). It was not for anything that at the 72nd UNGA, over 70% of countries represented from as little known Surinam to Ghana and a host of others, called for total serious reforms of the UN body, as it has become an instrument for purposes at complete variance with what it was established for and an unjust body lacking complete representation. Solving the slave trade cannot require military intervention by the UN and EU, as countries whose citizens are already there, have started evacuating them. However on the specific issue of ISIS, military intervention would not be out of the question and with regards to that, Russia would be a better option as they have demonstrated the capacity in other such theaters, where ISIS have held sway, because there is a school of thought that perceives ISIS as a creation of some powers to advance their agenda through proxy wars. And this could be just how they get it down with the establishment of bases and what have you, on the continent. Most importantly though, the ultimate question becomes how does Libya get back to being better country than what it was before and a functioning and integral part of the AU and the Arab League.