Business opportunities for Ghana and the EU

Navigating the business landscape in Ghana may present its complexities, yet the country stands out with its significant political stability, favorable demographics, and strategic geographical location. These strengths position Ghana as a leading destination for investment in West Africa, where operators are facing an increasingly challenging environment.

Moreover, the evolving dynamics of global supply chains, shifting cross-border economic relationships, the impacts of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, and the advances in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) present important implications while also new opportunities for both current and future investors in Ghana.

Against this backdrop of change and opportunity, the Ghanaian government is faced with an important reform agenda. These reforms, aligned with the IMF Programme and future administrations' plans, aim to sustain existing investments while fostering new private sector growth. As the EU is rolling out investments under its Global Gateway strategy, Ghana’s investment-related reforms agenda is crucial.

How can Ghana build a business environment characterised by predictability and transparency? What enhancements to the business ecosystem will boost confidence in the Ghanaian market? And how can investment agreements, such as the Sustainable Investment Facilitation Agreement (SIFA), alongside preferential trade policies like the AfCFTA, ECOWAS, and EPA, play pivotal roles in drawing the much-needed investment into the country?

Ghana and the EU have been implementing the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) since 2016. Besides granting quota-free, duty-free access of Ghanaian products to Europe, the agreement ensures stability, predictability and legal certainty for economic operators.
Moreover, the EU-Ghana EPA also places Ghana in an ideal situation to take advantage of the market opportunities on the African continent. Since the EPA entered into force in 2016, Ghana’s total export volume almost doubled, reaching €17.6 billion in 2022. In other words, the EPA works and creates an enabling base for more sustainable and efficient supply chains in Ghana.

The EU is Ghana’s number one supplier (€3,3 billion in 2023) while, at the same time, Ghana exported €2.6 billion worth of products to the EU. This makes the EU Ghana’s second most important merchandise trade partner, with a total trade value of around €6 billion in 2023.

As EU companies invested around 1 billion euros in the country in 2023, the EU has proposed to open negotiations for a Sustainable Investment Facilitation Agreement (SIFA) with Ghana. These agreements focus on practical measures to improve the attraction, expansion and retention of foreign direct investments by developing countries. This means increasing the transparency of investment-related measures, and streamlining the day-to-day administrative procedures that foreign investors have to go through to establish and carry out their activities. SIFAs also serve wider policy objectives, notably through the implementation of sustainable development commitments and the roll-out of the EU Global Gateway strategy of investments. The ultimate goal is to unlock economic potential, foster economic diversification, and promote inclusive and sustainable growth, as well as to strengthen the economic partnership. The first of such agreements – the EU-Angola SIFA – was recently concluded, and will enter into force in July 2024.

The session will feature the launch of the ‘Special Measure’ Team Europe initiative on manufacturing and access to vaccines, medicines and health technologies in Africa (MAV+), Ghana component.

Under the EU Global Gateway strategy, the health and pharmaceutical sector is one of the priority ones for the EU investments. This new initiative shall take a holistic approach to enable a conductive environment for MAV+ in Africa and therefore Africa’s leapfrog to a thriving health and pharmaceutical sector for the continent.

Ghana is at the forefront of value chain development in several sectors, notably the pharmaceutical one. It is an example worth noting for both public and private sector engagement as several projects demonstrate.

In the pharmaceutical sector, the Gavi Vaccine Alliance states that Africa’s production of vaccines respond to only 0.1% of global demand, simultaneously covering less than 1% of the continent’s consumption despite being the largest market in the world. Lately, a significant number of manufacturing projects have come up in Africa, notably within the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the African Union (AU) and Gavi or between the EU and partner countries.

Ghana did not miss out on this, by developing the DEK project on vaccine manufacturing following a EUR 5M investment grand agreement with the European Union. While this project seeks to produce hundreds of million doses of vaccines every year for diseases such as malaria, or cholera, it is worth asking ourselves the opportunities offered by regionalisation, but also the possible challenges they may raise.

The session will seek to address both the opportunities and challenges encountered by the sectoral actors. Seizing the opportunity from the presence of a large array of stakeholders, the session will discuss (1) vaccine manufacturing undertakings with a focus on the potential for growth due to the fostering of local value addition and (2) supply of raw materials and (3) its potential for regionalisation.

The agri-food sector is a rapidly expanding sector with great potential for the country. In 2023, the Agribusiness Platform promoted by Eurocham and supported by the European Delegation in Ghana was officially launched, with the objective to facilitate trade between Europe and Ghana in the sector. The strategy is to connect local producers with potential European importers, to encourage the exchange of information, to collect data on Ghanaian production and to provide constant regulatory updates.

The panel that will take place during the Ghana-EU Business Forum will mainly focus on the analysis of the problems relating to investment in the agricultural sector in Ghana. There will be operators in the sector and investors who have already set up their companies in Ghana and who will be able to use their own experiences as an example. The objective is to indicate what strategies the government can implement in order to facilitate foreign investments in the sector.

EMPOWERING GHANA'S DIGITAL FUTURE: IT, DIGITALISATION, AND THE OUTSOURCING INDUSTRY

The panel will assess the current state of IT infrastructure in Ghana and strategies for improving connectivity, internet access, and digital literacy. The growth potential of the outsourcing industry in Ghana, including opportunities for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and IT services will be a main topic including addressing the need for skilled IT professionals and strategies for building a robust talent pipeline through education, training, and collaboration with industry partners.

The industry experts together with government representatives will explore the role of government policies and initiatives in fostering a conducive environment for IT and digitalisation investments, including incentives for businesses and regulatory frameworks.

Finally, the panel will be discussing opportunities for collaboration with international partners, including knowledge exchange, investment partnerships, and access to global markets.

The panel will discuss the renewable energy landscape in Ghana, including existing projects, policies, and initiatives promoting renewable energy adoption and identify opportunities for expanding the renewable energy infrastructure in Ghana, such as abundant solar resources, increasing energy demand, and net-metering.

At the same time the panel will shed light on the challenges hindering renewable energy deployment in Ghana, including financing constraints, grid integration issues, regulatory barriers, and public awareness. It will examine existing policies and regulations governing renewable energy in Ghana, and the exploration of strategies to enhance the policy framework to attract investment and promote innovation.

A discussion on financing mechanisms and investment opportunities, including public-private partnerships, international cooperation, and impact investment will conclude the panel.

In the automotive sector in Ghana we have yet another example of opportunity for the development of a regional value chain. With an export potential of up to EUR 9 billion, the sector has one of the biggest growth potentials of the continent. Integrating the value chain is key in order to foster local value addition and eventually transformative production.

Ghana is a good case for discussion. Identified as having a comparative advantage in manufacturing value addition, access to electricity, government policy and access to natural resources such as aluminium, iron ore, lithium or manganese, it is worth stating that national actors have an expertise, greatly valuable for exchanges on RVC development.

The session will seek to address both the opportunities and challenges encountered by the sectoral actors. Seizing the opportunity from the presence of a large array of stakeholders, the session will discuss (1) the recent developments in the sector in Ghana, (2) the opportunity for Africa lying in the development of a value chains focusing on e-vehicles and e-mobility and (3) the position of Ghana in the value chain per se, including considering its capacity for raw material provision.

MANUFACTURING IN GHANA: OPPORTUNITIES, CHALLENGES, AND THE FUTURE

The panel will discuss the current state of play of the textile and garment industry in Ghana, including existing and planned projects, policies, and initiatives promoting the growth of the industry and its share in Ghana’s exports to the EU and and world. It will look at opportunities for expanding textile and garment manufacture in Ghana, such as linked initiatives aiming at more local cotton production, investment incentives, support to procurement of machines etc.

At the same time the panel will shed light on the challenges hindering the sector’s development in Ghana, including financing constraints, regulatory barriers, high energy prices, raw materials base and more. It will also examine opportunities for Ghanaian textile and garment exports to the EU market duty and quota-free under the Economic Partnership Agreement. It will look into existing policies and regulations governing and impacting the sector in Ghana, and the exploration of strategies to enhance the policy framework to attract investment and promote innovation and sustainability in the sector in Ghana.

Being able to find qualified employees is an important comparative advantage for any country or region when it comes to attracting investments. In this context, Ghana has high potential due to a young population and a number of well-educated graduates who enter the job market every year or who are eager to also gain some professional experience abroad.

At the same time, it can be difficult for European companies to assess qualifications of TVET or university graduates and many European markets require specific procedures to have those qualifications recognised.  Against this background the panel wants to shed some light on the status of the Ghanaian job market and the employment perspectives of young people, including the perspective of European companies on what profiles and skills they are searching for during local and international recruitment. Based on that, the discussion will provide further perspectives on how the EU, Ghanian authorities and the private sector can work together in this field to not only increase the attractiveness of investments but also provide more opportunities for job-seekers.