Ghana: Press focuses on Grenada’s support for Ghana’s candidate for Commonwealth Scribe

APA – Accra (Ghana)
The report that the Prime Minister of Grenada, Dickon Mitchell, has announced that Grenada will be supporting Ghana’s foreign affairs minister to become the next Secretary General of the Commonwealth when the election is held in October is one of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Friday.
The Graphic reports that Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell has announced that Grenada will be supporting Ghana’s foreign affairs minister to become the next Secretary General of the Commonwealth when the election is held in October.
Earlier this month, Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey launched a bid to be the next Commonwealth Secretary-General, saying she wants to see a free-trade agreement among the 56 member nations.
To date, no other contender has emerged for the top role ahead of the scheduled 22 October election. A Commonwealth Secretary-General can serve a maximum of 2 terms of 4 years each. The incumbent is Dominican Baroness Patricia Scotland whose tenure ends in October.
“I will be publicly indicating that we have pledged to the President of Ghana that we will be supporting the distinguish nomination of the foreign minister of Ghana to lead the commonwealth when that time arises,” Prime Minister Mitchell told a joint sitting of the Lower and Upper House after President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo addressed the sitting.
He is the first African president to officially visit Grenada since the 1980s and is the guest of honour for the 50th Independence celebrations on 7 February. The purpose of the joint sitting was for Members of Parliament to “record fervent independence wishes to all citizens of the State of Grenada.” The sitting was preceded by a military parade and Ghana’s president inspected the guards.
In his address to the Members of Parliament, he said that the Grenada and other Caribbean people may have started as slaves but the contribution they have made to the development of the western hemisphere is matchless.
The newspaper says that the flag bearer for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, has commended the Bank of Ghana for acting responsibly to save the economy from collapse.
He said the central bank did this by providing the needed financing to keep the economy running at a critical moment.
Sharing his vision with Ghanaians at a public lecture at UPSA, he said “I must salute and give particular recognition to the Bank of Ghana, which has come under unfair criticism for taking the necessary measures which helped pull the economy back from the brink.
“The central bank provided needed financing to the Government at that critical moment,” he stated.
He said what the BoG did was very responsible, in putting the interest of the good citizens of Ghana first.
He pointed out that the data available shows that the financing provided to Government by the Bank of Ghana was temporary.
“The Bank of Ghana has provided zero financing to Government in five out of the last seven years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2023).
“The Bank of Ghana financing to government in the COVID-19 year of 2020 and liquidity crisis year of 2022 was because of a domestic and global crisis (underperforming domestic revenue and no access to international capital markets),” he said.
The Ghanaian Times reports that former President, John Agyekum Kufuor, says the country needs a leader that has a deeper understanding of the global digital economy and geopolitics to champion development.
The Former President said technology and digitisation were rapidly changing all sectors of development, and cautioned that failure to select a leader that understood that concept could affect Ghana’s rapid socio-economic development.
President Kufuor was speaking ahead of Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia’s address Ghanaians in Accra Wednesday.
The Former President described Dr Bawumia as “a man of destiny” and someone who had a grasp of digitisation and geopolitics.
“We need a leader that can marshal new technologies…We are in a new situation. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The time has come for this man (Bawumia)” former President Kufuor said.
He appealed to Ghanaians to support Dr Bawumia’s presidential ambition in order to help the country succeed in an era dominated by technology.
Dr Bawumia’s address will serve as a precursor to his official campaign launch, following his election as Flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party in November 2023.
The Vice President is expected to highlight the major achievements of the Akufo-Addo-led government over the past seven years and outline his vision for Ghana should he be elected as the president on December 7.
The newspaper says that Vice President, Alhaji Dr Mahammudu Bawumia, has outlined 15 broad areas his government will focus on when elected the President in the next generation elections.
Dubbed: ‘Bold Solutions for the Future of our Country,’ the initiatives focused on innovation, agriculture, youth employment, digitalisation, technology and vocational training.
Speaking to Ghanaians on his vision yesterday at the University of Professional Studies Accra (UPSA) in Accra Wednesday, Dr Bawumia said he was going to lead a digital revolution with the goal of training one million digital talents.
He said his government would harness the innovative talent of Ghanaians as part of his transformative vision for the country.
Dr Bawumia said his vision would in addition apply technology to transform key sectors of the economy including agriculture, healthcare, education and manufacturing.
He said he aimed to also build the digital talents Ghana needed for the global digital revolution with plans to train at least 200,000 youth per year on digital software skills.
“I want to see Ghana build the digital talent we require for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This will mean providing digital and software skills to hundreds of thousands of youth. In collaboration with the private sector, we will train at least 200,000 youth per year for the next five years. This, along with other policies, will create jobs for the youth, including school dropouts.”
In addition he said “I also want to enhance the repositioning of the education system towards STEM, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and vocational skills to cope with the demands of the fourth Industrial Revolution and job creation. In collaboration with the private sector, we will aim to train at least 1,000,000 software developers in five years (200,000 per year). As software developers. They will have job opportunities worldwide.”
Dr Bawumia, who is also the flag bearer of the NPP, again said he was confident that the Ghanaian had the talent and what it would take to be number one in the world in many areas.
GIK/APA