APA – Accra (Ghana)
The meeting of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo with the Amir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani in Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Majlis at the Amiri Diwan in Doha on Sunday is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Graphic reports that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has held talks with the Amir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani met at Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Majlis at the Amiri Diwan (the official workplace and office of the Amir) in Doha today (Sunday, March 12, 2023).
The talks took place on the occasion of President Akufo-Addo’s visit to the country to attend the 5th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5), a statement issued by the Amir’s office said.
During the meeting, they discussed bilateral relations between the two countries and ways to enhance and support them in various fields, in addition to a number of topics of common interest.
The President was among 5,000 participants that attended LDC5, including 47 Heads of State or government and 130 Ministers and Vice-Ministers.
They called for developed countries to urgently provide the most vulnerable countries with the assistance they need to drive socio-economic and environmental development.
Corporate leaders together with civil society, youth and other partners shared plans, innovations, and recommendations in several areas: from enhancing the participation of LDCs in international trade and regional integration to addressing climate change, strengthening global partnerships, supporting graduation, and leveraging the power of science, technology, and innovation.
The Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) in Doha, Qatar ended on March 9, 2023. with member states committing to measures to deliver on the Doha Programme of Action, a ten-year plan to put the world’s 46 most vulnerable countries back on track to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Bold commitments at the conference marked a transformative turning point for the world’s poorest countries, whose development has been hindered by crises including COVID-19, climate change and deepening inequalities.
The newspaper says that UK Prime Minister will host African leaders in London for the second UK-African Investment Summit on April 23 and 24, 2024.
The announcement comes as Foreign Secretary James Cleverly signs new trade and investment agreement with Sierra Leone whilst in Freetown.
The Summit aims to promote two-way trade and investment, creating jobs and growth and supporting women entrepreneurs.
The UK-African Investment Summit will bring together political and business leaders from the UK and 24 African countries, as well as representatives of international and regional organisations.
The Summit will bring together Heads of State and Government from 24 African countries with British and African business leaders.
It will strengthen UK-African partnerships to create jobs and growth, supporting British and African talent in sectors such as finance and technology, and promote women entrepreneurs.
The 24 countries are: Algeria; Angola; Cameroon; Côte d’Ivoire; Democratic Republic of Congo; Egypt; Ethiopia; Ghana; Kenya; Malawi; Mauritania; Mauritius; Morocco; Mozambique; Namibia; Nigeria; Rwanda; Senegal; Sierra Leone; South Africa; Tanzania; Tunisia; Uganda; and Zambia.
The Summit will build on the results of the UK-African Investment Summit 2020 and virtual UK-African Investment Conferences in 2021 and 2022.
The UK-African Investment Summit 2020 marked an important milestone in partnerships with African countries and announced over £6.5bn of deals, plus a further £8.9bn of investment commitments.
The virtual conferences in the following years built further connections between UK and African businesses, with more than 3,000 UK and African delegates looking at future opportunities to facilitate deals, with a focus on clean growth opportunities across the continent.
The Ghanaian Times reports that a total of 9,240,000 constituting 28.5 per cent of Ghana’s population of 30.8m (2021 census) are migrants, a study on Migration by the Ghana Statistical Service, has said.
The report, among others, defined migration as the movement in space often involving a change in the usual place of residence.
Thus, the migrants being referred to constitute both Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians.
A total of 4,851,000, constituting 52.5 per cent of the migrants, were females and the remaining 4,389,000, constituting 47.5 per cent, males.
Out of the number, non-Ghanaian migrants per the Census in 2021 stood at 294, 341, compared with 398,585 in 2010.
Estimated 60.5 per cent of the non-Ghanaian migrants were males and the 39.5 per cent females.
The report, titled 2021 Population and Housing Census Thematic Report on Migration, said more of the migrants in the country live in rural areas, indicating that the proportion of migrants in rural areas accounted for 33.9 per cent and those in the urban centres stood at 22.2 per cent of the migrant population.
It further said among the 16 regions, Greater Accra received the most migrants, followed by Ashanti and Western regions.
Presenting the highlight of the study findings, Professor John K. Anarfi, the Lead writer of the report, explained that migration played an integral role in the development of any nation.
He said it was in light of that the United Nations had recognised that countries include in their census questionnaires questions to elicit migration information.
Prof. Anarfi said six regions in the south such as Greater Accra, Western North, Bono East, Ashanti, and Ahafo received more migrants than they sent out and the Northern regions sent out more migrants than they received.
“Of the six regions, Greater Accra gained the highest of over one million people, Ashanti gained over 200,000 people and Western Northern over 50,000,” he said.
Prof. Anarfi said Central and Eastern regions are in the south but experienced negative net migration, which is the loss of persons from rural areas, impact on the level of output and development of rural areas.
The Lead Writer of the Report said most of the non-Ghanaian migrants were from Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Togo.
He explained that most of the non-Ghanaian migrants were engaged in services, sales, skilled agriculture, forestry and fishery.
Prof. Anarfi said most of the Ghanaian population were youthful and the government needed to put strategies in place to provide the youth with skills and jobs to enable the country to take advantage of the demographic dividend.
The Lead Writer mentioned some of the reasons for migration as marriage, family reunification and employment.
He also called for a comprehensive study to assess the migration situation in the country, indicating that the last comprehensive migration study was done in 1995.
The Government Statistician, Professor Samuel K. Annim, in his remarks, said the migration report was the 17th one the GSS had generated from the 2021 Population and Housing Census.
He said the report was to help generate data on migration for policy planning.
The newspaper says that President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has lauded the intervention of Commodity Monitor’s GoldKacha machine in the country’s quest to ensure safe and responsible mining.
The President who made the remarks at this year’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) to Parliament expressed the government’s commitment to continue the fight against illegal mining using improved technology and with the support of the security agencies.
The government, he said, was not against mining; however, it was determined to promote responsible small-scale mining through the ongoing Community Mining Schemes and use of technology.
He said 16 of the Community Schemes had been commissioned and that three more would be commissioned by the end of the year.
The President said the Community Mining Schemes were supported with the GoldKacha technology, which was equipment designed to help small-scale miners to extract gold from the ore without the use of toxic mercury.
The technology has the capacity to process sand, clay and hard rock and the modular nature of the mining machine design, allows for different modules to be added to expand the plants as the need arises.
The equipment introduced by a Ghanaian trading and logistics company, Commodity Monitor Limited, allows miners to gain a return on investment as the mine expands; the facility was made to specifically remediate mercury contaminated degraded lands, and recover significant quantities of gold in the process up to about 95 per cent compared with the crude method that allows miners to get just about 35 per cent of their gold.
GIK/APA
Press spotlights meeting of President Akufo-Addo with Amir of Qatar, others
