Government has indicated it will establish the “African Sankofa Savings Account”, a Diasporan investment and savings fund, to provide investment opportunities for the Diaspora Community worldwide.
Ken Ofori–Atta, Minister for Finance, who disclosed this at a press briefing recently in Accra, said the fund would welcome both high and low-income earners in the Diaspora who wanted to invest in their homeland.
According to him, that would present another source of revenue for Ghana, where the funds “would be invested in tourism infrastructure, agriculture value addition, real estates, music, culture, retirement homes, etc.”
He noted that the fund had the potential of raising about three billion dollars within a year or two, with the yield results moving beyond what traditional exports were earning currently.
He said his outfit, Bank of Ghana and Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) were collaborating and working on the modalities, which are expected to be made public soon.
Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Barbara Oteng Gyasi, has lauded the project saying, one of the seven pillars government has adopted in ‘Beyond the Year of Return’ was to create investment opportunities for the Diasporans and establish the Sankofa fund.
Describing activities which marked the Year of Return as successful, she said the private sector should desist from needlessly increasing the price of their goods and services, since that could distract tourists to other destinations.
Some Africans from the Diaspora who have lived in Ghana for a number of years who were present at the event lauded the government for the initiative. They said they were ready to support government initiatives that would bring more Diasporan investors and visitors back home.
The “Year of Return, Ghana 2019” is a major landmark and birth-right journey inviting the Global African family, home and abroad, to mark 400 years of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Virginia.
Close to a million Diasporans are believed to have visited Ghana.
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