An Ellen Gurney Professor of History and African/African American Studies at the Harvard University is proposing for Ghana to revert to the drawing board on manufacturing of foods at the local level.

According to Prof. Emmanuel K. Acheampong, Ghana is fully stocked with all the necessary natural resources to get back to the limelight of development.

He stressed that, “…Agriculture has declined, per capita we’re more inefficient as farmers today than we were at the end of colonial rule... we have skipped manufacturing to go into service, telecommunications, media etc. I also pointed out that no country has developed by skipping manufacturing.”

Prof. Acheampong noted that the country has to adopt the William Arthur Lewis recommendation which suggests the need to capitalize on feeding oneself and by bringing agriculture to the level of efficiency enabling it to be the first line of agro-based business.

He further cited a quote by US President Donald Trump who indicated that Steel and Aluminium were the basics of American manufacturing and urged them to go back to the basics; “for us it is food” and admonished government to adopt the principle of producing food and utilizing the country’s raw materials.

He also hailed government for the Planting for Food and Jobs initiative and encouraged its implementation.

The Oppenheimer Faculty Director at the Harvard University Centre for African Studies was speaking at the sidelines of his two-day presentation on “Nkrumah and the Making of the Ghanaian Nation-State”.

Present at the public lecture were dignitaries including Chairman of the University of Ghana’s Council, Prof. Yaw Twumasi, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana Prof. Ebenezer Oduru Owusu, former VCs Prof. Akilakpa Sawyerr and Prof. Ernest Aryeetey.

Other guests included students and staff of the Tema International School.