Ms. Shirley Ayokor Botchwey, Ghana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, is to pay a two-day working visit to Russia to help deepen bilateral ties between the two countries.

This was announced by a spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, in her weekly media briefing.

She is going to be in Moscow from August 19–20, and would hold talks with her Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.

Their discussions are expected to focus on strengthening political, security, trade and economic cooperation.

Zakharova “considerable attention will be paid to the task of promoting mutually beneficial cooperation in the fields of energy, the development of mineral and hydrocarbon resources and the implementation of promising infrastructure projects”.

“There is an in-depth exchange of views on international and regional issues of mutual interest with a focus on countering terrorism, resolving crisis situations in Africa, primarily in the Sahara-Sahel region, and fighting piracy in the Gulf of Guinea”, she added.

The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry said on its official website that both countries, through collective and persistent ways, would make noticeable contributions in raising their current relations to an appreciable level.

Ms. Ayokor Botchwey, earlier told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that “Ghana and Russia have an excellent diplomatic relations, which has been developed over the years, precisely 60 years”.

She, hwoever, said “for a relationship lasting this long, one would have expected it to move past where it is now, but there is still room for improvement”.

Ghana was open to all the support that it could get from its friends and development partners in its industrialization drive - “One-District, One-Factory”.

The West African country, she noted, could benefit immensely from the expertise of Russia in the area of industrialization.

“The message to Russian investors is that Ghana is the gateway to West Africa and, therefore, the right place to invest.”

She touted her country’s solid political stability, security and attractive business environment, and said, that was where anybody could put their money.

She encouraged Russian investors to seize the opportunity invest in Ghana, saying, “it is the right time and the right place to be in Africa”.

“Ghana has one of the most attractive investment packages for foreign investors in Africa. Opportunities abound in nearly all the sectors of the Ghanaian economy - transportation, construction, real estate, banking, health, education, manufacturing, energy, agriculture and commerce, for every kind of foreign investor and on any scale, being large, medium or small.”