As Ghana celebrates 50 years of nationhood, it is worth highlighting various parts of the country and their potentials for moving the country towards greater development. The northern part of Ghana, for example, can boast of so much human and other natural resources, that if properly harnessed, could effectively help relieve the whole country from poverty and want, to the extent of making Ghana the envy of the subregion and the world at large.
Indeed a 2005 study commissioned by the UK Department for International Development, (DFID), and undertaken by the Centre for Policy Analysis and the Overseas Development Institute noted that if northern Ghana had grown at the country’s average rate during the 1990s, it would have added substantially to Ghana’s average income and foreign exchange earnings.
With regard to its human resources, northern Ghana can boast of very hardworking citizens whose skills and potential remain underutilized. In view of the harsh weather conditions which they have had to endure, the inhabitants have devised various ingenious ways of eking out a living.
For instance, during the dry season when the land is virtually dried, no proper farming could be done without irrigation so majority of the people, who don not have this facility, travel to the forest and coastal vegetations to spend their time of laborious farming till the rains return to their homelands, where they return to engage in farming that goes a long way to increase agricultural production in the country.
AGRICULTURE
About three quarters of Ghana’s agricultural production is dependent on the northern Ghana and it is worth acknowledging this so that the necessary attention is paid to the sector. The vast arable land in northern Ghana could feed the whole of the country over a decade if well utilized. The land is suitable for the cultivation of all sorts of foodstuff including groundnuts, beans, millet, maize, yam, corn, Bambara beans, mango, watermelons, tomatoes, onions, shea butter, cotton, rice,sunflower, as well as theproduction of various types of livestock including cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, fowls, guinea fowls, and ostrich. There is the need to invest in the production of these in large quantities for export in order to earn the county millions of dollars that we are in dire need of.
Investment Potentials
Investment opportunities in the northern sector are enormous and the people of northern Ghana are very accommodating. There is an airport in the area, abundant labors and vast land for any type of project.
There is also a ready market for the goods production to be exported to any part of the country and raw materials like cotton, shea butter, meat, tomatoes, yam and leather among other things that could be processed into finished products.
A recent discovery in the area, which could boost the country’s investment potentials, is sugar cane. It has been discovered that the sector could undertake mass production of sugar cane for export and local use.
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