“My message for Ghanaians is this: the time to build a potent value added economy in Ghana, driven by a confident, educated workforce, is now. My government will not shy away in making the critical choices with the long-term interest of our people in mind.

“We will invest heavily in building up the most important ingredient for development: the intellectual property of the people – the mind – education, education, education – our only key to success. We want to add value to our human capital, add value to our governance, add value to our public services, add value to our infrastructure and add value to our economy.”

These were the words of the 2012 Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, when he delivered the keynote address at the 12th Windhoek Dialogue Parliamentary conference in Accra, taking place at Novotel from 23rd to 25th November 2011.

According to Nana Addo, the NPP wants to add value to every facet of Ghanaian life, explaining that the NPP is determined to “get Ghana once again leading our continent in entrenching democracy and transforming the structure of the African economy to a modern, manufacturing kind that has the capacity to create and spread wealth across the length and breadth of our vast continent.”

The NPP flagbearer stated that despite the fact that Ghana is arguably the most stable democracy in our region, has seen a sustained economic growth over the past decade, record hikes in prices and cocoa over the last couple of years and currently has a large pool of millions of educated Ghanaians, Ghana’s economy continues to a “Guggisberg economy.”

Ghana’s economy, according to Nana Addo, continues to be a mere producer and exporter of raw materials as 2011 budget estimates, as contained in the 2012 budget, reveal that cocoa, gold and crude oil account for at least 81% of Ghana’s total exports.

An Akufo-Addo administration, he said, will focus on building an integrated industrialisation programme, with a clear bias towards supporting our small and medium scale enterprises with access to science and technology, incentives and markets to make them more productive and competitive.

“We will introduce programmes that will boost the agricultural sector and introduce incentives that will encourage our banks to provide affordable credit and other financial services to SMEs and launch a new wave of small and viable industries across Ghana,” Nana Addo said.

He continued, “The recent petroleum find offers us the perfect opportunity to create a petrochemical industry in Ghana, including monetising our gas to create a multi-billion dollar gas feedstock industry. We have the opportunity to make Ghana a regional centre for light manufacturing industry for a regional market of some 350 million people and beyond, by linking together our numerous natural resources, like food produce, bauxite, iron ore, oil and gas, with our talents and energy to turn our nation into an economic powerhouse in Africa, generating employment and income for our youth.”

Other speakers on the day included Ambassador Claude Maerten, Head of the EU delegation, Ghana; Samakuva Isaias, Federal President of UAPDD of the African Parliament (Union of Parties for Democracy and Development) and Michael Gahler, the group co-ordinator of for the European People’s Party of the European Parliament, chairing the programme.