Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, has indicated governments willingness to step up its relations with Japan to attract technology and industry giants in the Asian state to drive government’s agenda of moving Ghana from a raw material production economy into an industrialized and technologically driven one.
This was made known during a bilateral meeting with her counterpart, Taro Kono of Japan on the sidelines of the 7th TICAD Ministerial conference held in Tokyo.
Briefing the media, the minister stated that Ghana was interested in adopting the best practices from Japan’s industrialized economy.
“I believe that if we want to leapfrog in having very sophisticated technology, we need to be learning from best practices in Japan. We don’t want to re-invent the wheel, they have already done it and we just need to learn from them”.
The minister confirmed her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono, has pledged his country’s commitment to link Ghana up with Monorail companies in Japan to assist the country with the development of a monorail system of transportation as exist in several cities in Japan.
Discussions are however expected to translate into concrete and measurable projects as the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo readies for a state visit to Japan at the invitation of Prime Minister, Shinzō Abe, later this year.
By Nana Afrane Asante
